The New Socially Privileged Racial Humor: Q: What Do You Call a Black Man Who's a Pioneering Pediatric Neurosurgeon and One of the Greatest Physicians Living Today? A: "Uncle Tom," "Oreo," and Beneficiary of "The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations"
The bulk of the dialogue between Thomas "What's the Matter with Kansas?" Frank and a guy named Adolph Reed Jr is mostly about their upset that Obama isn't sufficiently pro-labor or pro-income redistribution.
I'll leave it up to you add to your own editorial punctuation to that sentence, but, for the lazy among you, here are some pre-written editorial punctuation marks you can just slip in there: (!), (?), (!!?), (????!!!!), (WTF, DUDE?!?!!)
Reed's central criticism of the contemporary left is that it has become focused on identity politics. As he says in the interview: "The problem with a notion of equality or social justice that's rooted in the perspectives of multiculturalism and diversity is that from those perspectives you can have a society that's perfectly just if less than 1 percent of the population controls 95 percent of the stuff, so long as that one percent is half women and 12 percent black, and 12 percent Latino and whatever the appropriate numbers are gay."
This he attributes to "electoralitis," the imperative of electing Democrats to public office. While Reed and Frank acknowledge that such an approach has been successful in some elections, they are scornful of it. Says Frank: "[Democrats] think they have an iron clad coalition behind them. They have this term for it: the Coalition for [actually 'of'] the Ascendent. I forget what it is. Made up of these groups, and labor is not one of them."
Reed disdains what he calls "the cult of the most oppressed," the idea "that there's something about the purity of these oppressed people that has the power to condense the mass uprising. I've often compared it to the cargo cults. . . . As my dad used to say, 'If oppression conferred heightened political consciousness there would be a People's Republic of Mississippi.' "
Go to Taranto (the link goes to BotW) for the discussion of "sociopathy." Reed analogizes Obama's "blank slate" persona to that of a sociopath, notoriously manipulative individuals who can become whatever their intended target needs them to be. He doesn't push on the idea too hard (and it does seem a bit overmuch), but I thought it would make for a good screaming headline.
Breaking: People Who Love To Boss Other People Around Now Want to Make it a Crime to Call Them "Bossy"
—Ace
Go figure. The "#banbossy" meme is up and running. The publicity campaign is co-sponsored by the Girl Scouts.
Now they don't want to make it an actual against-the-law crime, but they do want to stigmatize the word, such that, you know, you've committed a social crime if you call the person who's trying to control your expression "bossy." There should be consequences, you see, for saying the B-word.
The new B-word I mean. The old one is still also out, of course.
Allah notes that this is done, it is alleged, to help girls. But it's not girls who are falling behind in education, and therefore falling behind on their career track.
Republican “Super Lobbyist”: Conservatives Need To Shut Up And Listen To Republican Leaders
—DrewM.
I love self-described “bi-partisan, super lobbyist” John Feehery. If you wanted to create a caricature of the out of touch, self-important, above it all Republican establishment class you’d have to invent him. Thankfully he already exists and he loves to take to the digital pages of The Hill every now and then to remind the rest of us who runs things.
Today’s sermon is dedicated to the joys of knowing your place if you’re a conservative. You see according to Feehery the real problem in the GOP and our politics at large is too much individualism and not enough collectivism with a chosen few (not surprisingly he's among the few) leading the way. Sure it starts out as a bashing of millennials but he really only warms to the task when he gets to his frequent target…conservatives.
For our kind of democratic Republic to work, the people have to delegate certain powers to their elected representatives, and with that delegation comes a certain amount of trust. But if the people don’t trust their fellow citizens, how can they trust their elected representatives?
And that is where you hit the limits of individualism.
We are seeing the fraying of the social contract in both political parties, but perhaps more acutely in the Republican Party today.
Sure, Barack Obama is unpopular with the conservative base, but almost as unpopular are Republican leaders John Boehner and Mitch McConnell. There is little patience to follow the leaders within the GOP. Trust has broken down. The movement will not be satisfied.
The Republican Party used to fall in line, but now, it is seemingly falling apart. The Tea Party insurgency is virulently distrustful of big government, big business and big labor. It despises the “Republican Establishment.” It has even declared war on the Chamber of Commerce.
The Democratic Party will not escape this chaos, as we hit the limits of individualism. The gender and racial political alliances upon which the modern party is built are not sturdy. One slip of the tongue, one off-color joke can end the career of a Democratic politician.
Liberals are even more anti-establishment than the Tea Party. They glorify Edward Snowden just as they call for the dismemberment of Wall Street. The Democrats are primarily a secular party that ignores, if not condemns, most church teachings (such as on abortion and gay marriage). The party has come unmoored from any religious values. It glorifies the individual, no matter what choices that individual might make.
Someone actually wrote with pride and a sense of loss that “the GOP used to fall in line”. And look where that got us. Bigger government, record debt, oh and the loss of the House, the Senate and the White House.
While those results might be cause for concern if you care about the future of the country more than a party, Feehery longs for those days. He seems very upset that conservatives aren’t satisfied with a pat on the head for their volunteer efforts and votes. Now they want not just rhetoric but results? It’s terribly embarrassing for everyone when the help forgets their station.
I love the part where he’s absolutely flummoxed as to why conservatives would turn on the Chamber of Commerce so allow me to help… they supported Obama’s so-called “stimulus”, they are cutting deals with big labor to force amnesty on the country and exists basically to get as much money and regulatory favor from taxpayers via D.C. as possible.
What a bunch of ungrateful bastards these small government, pro liberty conservatives are. Why aren’t showering the entrance of the Chamber’s offices with rose petals?
This self-declared elite wasn’t built in a day and it won’t be destroyed in one election cycle either. But when people wonder why I don’t really care if the GOP wins the Senate or even the presidency (get in line and support Chris Christie! Or Jeb Bush!) guys like this are at or near the top of the list. Putting the same people back in power and expecting different results is a fool’s errand.
Apparently whether you were allowed to eat sausage during Lent was a big theological issue that led to the Reformation in Switzerland. Here's what Wikipedia says:
The Affair of the Sausages (1522) was the event that sparked the Reformation in Switzerland. Ulrich Zwingli, pastor of Grossmünster in Zurich, Switzerland, spearheaded the event by publicly speaking in favor of eating sausage during the Lenten fast. Zwingli defended this action in a sermon called Von Erkiesen und Freiheit der Speisen (Regarding the Choice and Freedom of Foods), in which he argued, from the basis of Martin Luther's doctrine of Sola Scriptura, that "Christians are free to fast or not to fast because the Bible does not prohibit the eating of meat during Lent."
U.S. intelligence told Bush that Saddam tried to buy yellowcake in Niger. Bush claiming to believe that, and repeating it to the American people, was a lie.
And now:
U.S. intelligence told Obama that Russia would not invade Ukraine. You can't blame Obama for believing U.S. intelligence.
Get ready for a whole lot of 'debt adjustment' since the B-word is such a harsh term.
The EU is trying to erase 'bankruptcy' from the English language and replace it with the term 'debt adjustment'.
A drive by Brussels to remove the 'stigma' of going bust would include a ban on the word, which has been in use in Britain since the mid-16th Century.
It raises the bizarre prospect of businessmen who run into financial trouble having to say: 'Bad news. I've been declared debt adjusted.'
...The word bankruptcy dates back 500 years and is believed to derive from the Italian banca rotta, meaning 'broken bench', inspired by the ancient custom of breaking a money-changer's bench to signify his insolvency.
This time in Kansas City. MO. But you won't hear any protests over it because both the men involved are white and the shooter was a policeman.
The parallels to the Zimmerman defensive shooting are striking, including the fact that the attacker was unarmed, the relative positions of the attacker and the defender, the beating of the defender's head against a concrete sidewalk threatening loss of consciousness, the failure of observers to provide assistance, and the relative lack of injuries to the attacker other than the bullet wound inflicted in self-defense.
One of the first people to be saved by the new drug penicillin.
Genean Hixon was one of the first American civilians to be treated with the drug, The Denver Post reports.
Hixon, born Genean Smith on March 3, 1931, was hospitalized in July 1943 with severe osteomyelitis, the paper reports -- a bone disease then-considered incurable and possibly fatal.
Her daughter, Connie Hixon Davis, told the Post that her mother spent more than four years in hospital beds in her teens but was saved by the treatment.
Hixon was subsequently known as the 'Penicillin Girl' after being treated with the drug. She reportedly received fan mail, and even a bouquet of roses from one soldier.
'Interestingly, she developed an allergy to penicillin and couldn't take it in her later years,' Hixon Davis told the paper.
Penicilin also saved my grandfather's life. In 1943 he was training to be a navigator/radio operator in the Eighth Air Force's bombing campaign over Germany but developed a severe bone infection. It was so bad that he was confined to a bed for almost 9 months and doctors were unable to even amputate a limb to save his life.
But then he was transferred to a hospital in Santa Monica where they gave him massive doses of a new drug called penicillin. It took a few months but doctors were able to slowly drive the infection out of his bones until the only bit left was in the tip of his right pinky - which they then chopped off.
Because of the partial loss of a finger and residual weakness he was ineligible to fly and later transferred to doing USO shows where he met many of the biggest celebrities of the time. Unfortunately many of his training buddies (including a lot of the men from his hometown) were lost due to the horrendous losses from bombing attacks on Germany without complete fighter coverage. He was also severely allergic to penicillin afterwards.
Damn, this is pretty impressive. Storms, the Milky Way, buttes, and cornfields. What's not to like?
It's like the trailer for the next True Detective. The killer will violate people with corn.
It was shot by a guy called Randy Halverston, who calls it "Dakotalapse."
Very sweet pictures. You could take any eight of them and insert them into Cosmos tomorrow and people would say "Wow, professional shots." If I'm reading him right he caught all of this in just six days.
Thanks to @rdbrewer4. You might want to check out the Jovian photography in the sidebar, too.
Former Think Progress Blogger: I Criticized Obama's Afghanistan Surge, and Center for American Progress Read Me the Riot Act For Creating "Daylight" Between CAP and the Obama Administration
The United States is at a constitutional tipping point: The rise of an uber presidency unchecked by the other two branches.
This massive shift of authority threatens the stability and functionality of our tripartite system of checks and balances....
James Madison fashioned a government of three bodies locked in a synchronous orbit by their countervailing powers. The system of separation of powers was not created to protect the authority of each branch for its own sake. Rather, it is the primary protection of individual rights because it prevents the concentration of power in any one branch. In this sense, Obama is not simply posing a danger to the constitutional system; he has become the very danger that separation of powers was designed to avoid.
The suspension of a portion of the ACA is only the latest such action related to the healthcare law...
Not even the power of the purse, which belongs exclusively to Congress, is sufficient to deter the White House. The Obama administration took $454 million from a fund established to help prevent illness and put the money instead toward paying for the federal health insurance exchange. Even leading Democratic members denounced this as "a violation of both the letter and spirit of this landmark law."
@charlescwcooke summed this up a while back on the podcast: It's not a law. It might have been passed in a law-like form, but it has been "interpreted" by Obama to not be a law at all.
It is simply an Enabling Act, a block grant of legislative authority to the executive on anything in the category of "health care."
This, of course, is illegal, and unconstitutional. Even if Congress wished to give their powers to the Executive, it would be illegal for them to do so, and the Supreme Court would call it illegal.
And yet here the President simply asserts that Congress has handed him his powers, and only a brave few say anything about it at all.
Ezra Klein/Matt Yglesias Start-Up "Vox.com" Promises to "Explain the News"
—Ace
You can check out their video Press Release at vox.com.
I only have a few thoughts here.
First, Klein/Yglesias are attempting to create a product that highlights their particular talents (such as they may be...). Nothing unusual in that.
However, there is a general history of failure when people attempt to create a "New Form of Entertainment!!!" that highlights their hybrid skills (such as they may be...)
Fact of the matter is, actors, dancers, and singers are in high demand in entertainment. Someone who can do it all -- the oft-claimed, seldom-seen "triple threat" of actor/dancer/singer -- is probably going to wind up being an actor, or a dancer, or a singer.
Klein and Yglesias seem to be like a "Triple Threat" of yore staging a two-man show (well, three, there's some woman involved too) which plays to their skill set of acting while singing while also dancing.
Those two-man Showcases of Talent! are generally known for not being known.
Second, Klein/Ygelias' pitch -- that they're going to take advantage of the format of the internet to make things more explanatory and richer in background information -- is, as it stands anyway, the sudden discovery of the Hyperlink.
Since the beginning of the Internet, people have been claiming the Hyperlink -- why, something's linked which provides background information, and you can click on it, or not, as you choose! -- was going to be the One Big Thing that would give the Internet the advantage over the print article.
I think one guy wrote a hyperlinked novel to demonstrate how the wonders of technology could transform the experience of reading a novel.
I don't know the name of it. I doubt more than 100 people do. Even the guy who wrote it would have to check Wikipedia.
The hyperlink has not in fact changed everything. Most people ignore the hyperlinks now embedded in news articles because they seem to be put in there by a not-terribly-smart computer, and usually just disclose a Bing search. (Or an ad.)
But let's suppose that Klein and Yglesias actually exploit the usefulness of the hyperlink, which, while currently available, is not being exploited much at all:
How much does that really add? It adds something; don't get me wrong. Convenience is in fact Added Value. If they offer a three paragraph digest on the Ukraine protests in every Ukraine article, well, that's not unhelpful. Someone coming in late to the story can click on that and get caught up to speed with a short, superficial blurb. (And short superficial blurbs do have their value.)
But I'm a bit underwhelmed that ultimately their Business Model -- their brand differentiation; their shot at immortality -- is to finally fully exploit the Hyperlink.
Well, that's not quite fair. They talk about all these new and innovative ways they're going to empower the reader to use technology so as to be More Informed Than Ever Before, but they offer no details about this. I think they flash a graph up for a moment (in which the the things being charted are unidentified -- so the yellow bars in the graph might just be representing the length of various yellow bars).
Given the lack of detail as to how they're going to dual-handedly transform the news-consumption experience and empower the reader like never before: I think they're just going to be doing hyperlinks.
And some chatty videos. People do enjoy discussions, so offering people discussing news topics adds a bit of value to the print version. Hey, we ourselves do a podcast.
And some chatty "faux-conversational" explainer pieces. In fact, Vox explains itself via a video, and then a "faux-conversational" explainer piece.
But mostly, I think, it's going to be the Hyperlink, and brief stubs explaining terms of art and key ideas.
I don't exactly wish them ill because I'm not exactly allied with their competitors (the regular media), and, to be honest, anyone making money from the internet sort of helps anyone else working on the internet.
But videos talking about the news, a blogger's chatty, casual style, and hyperlinks are not exactly cutting edge technologies in 2014.
I suppose design and execution might make all of this work better than one might be inclined to guess. Integration is itself a thing; the iPhone only did what five or six gadgets already did. The iPhone, however, successfully integrated them into one device.
So... I guess this could turn out to be the iPhone of blogs.
But I think one's guesses about the fate of the enterprise depend, to a large degree, upon one's estimation of the combined, triple-threat talents of Messrs. Klein and Yglesias.
Meh.
They're no True Detectives, I'll say that much.
Bo Knows Retractions: I included a mention of Bo Jackson as a double-threat who only turned out to be a single threat. This has generated argument in the comments, with some saying he played baseball at a "high level" until his serious 1991 injury.
I forget, to be honest. I will assume Commenters Are Always Right and credit Jackson with being a true double-threat until his injury.
Attkisson, who has been with CBS News for two decades, had grown
frustrated with what she saw as the network's liberal bias, an outsized influence by the network's corporate partners and a lack of dedication to investigative reporting, several sources said. She increasingly felt like her work was no longer supported and that it was a struggle to get her reporting on air.
The Politico article is actually very heavy on suggesting that political bias is the cause for the resignation (or at least that Attkisson would call it the reason).
The scolds and There Are Other Things To Discuss Brigades are out,* so here's their thread.
Question:
Why do you think it is that seeing someone take an interest in something you're not personally interested in causes you so much discomfort? Why is someone else's interest taken as a hostile attack on the self?
Aren't you defining the borders of your selfness a bit over-large, such that no one can take step you don't take without in some way giving offense to you, kicking at your worldview and ego?
Is anyone allowed to take any interest apart from the three or four you share?
Is mere difference a signal of hostility that must be challenged and confronted?
These are important questions.
My problem here is the hostility, as if I've given personal offense by acknowledging cultural phenomena not appreciated by some. True Detective was a big thread on Hot Air; the Dunham thing I got from the top center of Drudge.
These things are going on. This hostility over mere discussion of interests some don't share is a drag, and I'm tired of it.
Both posts qualify as political -- the True Detective one especially. Both are certainly cultural-political.
Some of you are turning cultural rejectivism into a type of cult and it's annoying. You can belong to any cult you like, but those of us not in the cult don't want to hear about it every day.
* Burn the Witch says "Brigades? You're talking about four people."
True.
But hostility is, by definition, hostile. One notices it.
On Rejectivism:
>>> ace, I really don't know what to make of much of the America I find myself in. Much is alien, nowadays. Pop "culture" is mostly irrelevant to me, and junk. Vulgar, and shallow. This, from a guy who rode choppers on the street as a young man. I just sort of stand back in awe about how bad much of America has become. -- backhoe
I get that, and I share, to a fair extent, the cultural rejectivism embraced by many.
But it's annoying to have people constantly harp that you must join them at their exact level of cultural rejectivism. If they've completely tuned out, everyone else must completely tune out.
It's not even expressed as an argument, which would be less annoying, because an argument is always interesting.
It's just expressed as a hostile resentment. And then what do I say in return?
There is an interesting argument as to whether someone should (or even could) completely unplug from the current american culture.
I'd be interested in having it.
But this drive by resentment/hostility shit -- that's not an argument, that's just negative emotionalism.
I think 90% of the right tends to reject most of our current culture. Obviously, we will each make exceptions here and there for things we find meritorious.
Can we please stop treating such minor, trivial cultural preferences as important and status-conferring and Tribal Loyalty Signaling?
I liked True Detective because I like smart detective shows. Period. That's not an attack on someone who has tuned out of current culture. I just happened to turn on the TV, and it was on.
And that's it.
If you're reading more into than that, I would suggest you should probably think about not reading so much political/tribal/cultural import into everything.
I knocked some of the left for being determined to read a narrative of Tribal Flattery into True Detective.
The reactionary version of this -- the simple act of discussing True Detective is an act of betrayal against the right-leaning tribe -- is no less ridiculous.
I saw a bit of this, just because it was so heavily promoted and I figured I should watch it, just as part of my job.
Truth Revolt headlines an article that one sketch featured Dunham "poking fun at the biblical narrative." That's true in a minor way -- the Eden story was handled irreverently, surely -- but the main target of the sketch was not the Eden story, but rather Dunham's screen persona as a narcissistic neurotic. She was playing her "Hannah" role from Girls in the sketch, and reduced everything in the Garden of Eden to her own list of shallow preoccupations. When "Adam" says that she was made from his rib, she objects "That's so sexist!"
When "God" speaks to her at the end, she only wants to ask about whether her publishing deal is still on. Hannah is forever worrying about whether her book will be published.
And of course it poked fun at her reputation for appearing nude at the drop of a hat. I think one "critic" said of the movie, "A lot of nudity... even for Dunham."
(One thing I think Dunham's critics either miss or do not confess often enough is that while Hannah is a neurotic narcissist, Dunham is aware of that fact, and makes Hannah the butt of jokes. That is, there seems to be an unexpressed belief that Dunham endorses all of Hannah's selfish, shallow dopiness, when in fact the show's position is that she is deeply flawed and quite mockable. She's still the hero of the show, don't get me wrong; but George Costanza was often the hero of Seinfeld, without Jerry Seinfeld or Jason Alexander ever being charged with believing that Costanza was the sort of character that people should aspire to be.
That doesn't mean I'm a fan-- I don't watch this show (except inadvertently, or by osmosis, because it gets chattered about a bunch). But it's just wrong to assert that Dunham is championing Hannah as a heroic ideal. Quite the opposite -- Hannah is intended as a deeply flawed comedic loser-hero. I'd say a "female Charlie Brown," but good ol' Chuck was highly ethical and thoughtful, which Hannah, in the main, is not.)
I really don't think that the Eden story was the main target of humor, here. It was the incongruity of seeing pampered, narcissistic, neurotic Hannah in the Garden of Eden, and to some extent about Dunham herself. Irreverent about God and the Bible, sure, but much more about Hollywood's interpretation of Bible stories than about actual Bible stories.
I mean, it's not a funny sketch, certainly. It just references Dunham's most famous role and puts that character in a different context. Meh. But I don't think the target here was the Bible. And if someone is goofing on herself, I give them latitude to goof on other things along the way.
There are so many problems with this that I really don’t want to take the time to parse them all. Suffice it to say that the creepy misogynist who opposes abortion just because he wants to keep women down is the left-wing P.C. equivalent of the equally bogus right-wing P.C. cliché that feminists are shrill, physically unattractive, and driven into their ideology by resentment at their failure to get men. Of course, in the case of every P.C. stereotype (whether it’s the P.C. of the Left or the Right) there are some individuals who conform to that stereotype. There are some pro-life activists who are misogynists who resent women’s equality; there are some pro-choice feminists who are shrill and motivated by resentment against men. But as broad-brush generalizations, both of these are, in my experience spanning almost five decades now, false.
Most readers will at this point expect me to denounce the SNL sketch because it expresses a political opinion different from mine. Nope: That’s totally fine with me. The day I can’t laugh at a joke by Rush Limbaugh or Jon Stewart or P. J. O’Rourke just because I don’t happen to agree with the political point of the particular joke is the day I will have to give up and register myself as “Humorless Person, Class A.” No, what really annoys me about that sketch is that I don’t remember there being any jokes in it. I am, among other things, a feminist and a pro-lifer, and I’m okay with people telling jokes about feminists and pro-lifers. But when you have an attack on any group, and don’t include any actual, you know, jokes, then what you’re left with is not a comedy sketch but merely an act of verbal aggression and ritual humiliation of the unpopular Other (in this case, the men’s-rights anti-abortion guy). As such, it of course deserves my protection from censorship, because I’m a First Amendment absolutist; what it does not deserve is my respect.
I understand that creative people like injecting "messages" important to them into their work, but such a piece has to also stand on its non-"message" merits to be a success. In this piece, there was nothing more than The Message. Girls good, h8rs bad.*
I only watched three or four sketches, to be honest. It just wasn't funny. That's not really Dunham's fault -- the show is never funny, and has not even been intermittently funny for about five or six years now. The only thing I thought was mildly funny (though really in an end-of-the-show weakest-sketches-that-made-the-cut sort of way) was this easy sketch about Bad Rap from Goofy White People. Easy and dumb, and I feel like I've seen this before, but still, if I'm being honest, I kind of smiled.
Yeah, that's about as good as SNL gets, and it only gets that good once every five episodes.
* I have to say I tuned out of this sketch because it was so lame but I suppose... I suppose it's possible their intent was, possibly, to mock the intolerance of people on the left? I didn't pick up on such a subtle reversal, but who knows, maybe it was just because I was too bored to pay attention.
Mild Spoiler Stuff below. I didn't think this was major spoiler stuff because I don't get into details about the plot, and the plot was already largely revealed (or was it???).
But artisanelle ette notes that there is still some Spoilerage here, so I'm putting this all below the fold.
A few weeks ago, the left began claiming that this show, which they liked (as many not on the left liked it) would wind up affirming their most sacred cultural-religious dogmas. A writer for the Daily Beast insisted the show was primarily an Anti-Christian narrative which would finally show those rubes for the Flying Spaghetti Monster worshipping dunces they really are.
A couple of weeks back, a conservative asked me about the show, and if he ought to watch it. He'd heard this chatter about a relentless leftist/atheist narrative.
Here's what I told him:
1. The Reverend Tuttle is plainly involved. So, if that's your test of whether a show is "anti-religious," then it is. But that's not my test. All men stray.
2. There is some connection to Tuttle's religious schools.
3. But as for an anti-Christian or anti-religious narrative -- nope, I didn't see it, and furthermore, based on interviews with the writer (and he's given a lot of them) I don't get that sense of him at all.
I would have added this much more: It seems to me that the writer conceived of his show as art, and about the human condition, and the human condition is not one of simple verities (conservatives are bad, school vouchers are bad for the children!!111!!!, God is a Lie) but one of mystery and doubt.
Note the large difference between what works as a political agitation -- simple truths plainly stated, one side plainly in the right, one side plainly in the wrong, a resolution which works towards certainty in one's beliefs, and a flattering of those beliefs -- and what works as an artistic one -- muddled messages, no resolution of conflicts between different points of view, questioning one's beliefs and challenging them.
A story about humans is an awful lot different than one about political agendas.
And yet, for many on the left, they could not see the difference. True Detective was a good show, therefore it must serve to flatter their cherished cult beliefs. It must resolve, they thought, to ultimately say that everything they believe is right.
Leftists pretend to care a great deal about art, and they attack the right for reading extraneous superficial political narratives into artwork.
And yet, and yet.
A few weeks ago, in a comment, someone asked about Cohle's nihilistic, anti-natalist, hyper-materialist belief system, and whether the show would wind up championing that.
I told that commenter I didn't think so-- in fact, I imagined that Cohle would have some kind of epiphany that challenged that belief system.
Note that this does not mean that I think the writer Nick Pizzolato is religious. In fact, based on his interviews, I would say he's probably an atheist or agnostic.
But I was fairly confident Cohle would wind up having some kind of epiphany that challenged his atheist beliefs anyway.*
Why?
Because drama. It's a rule of drama that drama is about conflict and change.
If a man comes into a movie claiming he knows everything and that he is 100% certain of every detail of his philosophy, welllll, shiiiit. You are almost guaranteed that that man's absolute certainty will be absolutely challenged by the end of the movie.
This isn't exactly a New Rule. (I mention "New Rule" because the left likes Bill Maher a lot and might understand it better phrased in this manner.)
This basic idea is only about 5000 years old, is all.
So yeah, I thought from the beginning that Cohle's absolute surety about his nihilistic beliefs would be challenged by the end of the show-- at the end of the show.
And that is indeed what happened. Cohle had a some kind of Near Death Experience in which he had a vision of something that seemed fairly close to most people's vague impressions of heaven (though, of course, the show never said "near death experience" nor "heaven").
He was racked with powerful sobbing at the end because he had been yanked back to earth from this heaven-like vision of another world, in which his family (including his dead daughter) surrounded him and filled him with love.
Does Pizzolato believe in Heaven? Again, I doubt it. But Pizzolato, unlike many of his left-leaning fanbois, believes in drama, and mystery, and leaving interesting questions open rather than perfectly resolved and therefore closed.
It should also be said that Cohle's vision means almost nothing, evidence-wise: he was dying, he was bleeding out, and he has synthesia (a brain disorder by which physical sensations are misinterpreted so that, famously, one can "see" the color of music). He is an unreliable narrator as to the existence of heaven; the point is not to establish that heaven exists in the world, but that it may now exist in Cohle's version of the world.
The writer wasn't interested in proving or disproving heaven or God in his story, though he probably has ideas on this point in his personal life. He seems capable of separating "What I believe as a voting citizen" from "What I think makes for a good story."
Many of his leftist fans couldn't seem to make that distinction themselves.
The debate between the religious and irreligious has been going on since the first man ever gazed into the sky and thought the stars might be gods, and the second man said, "Nah, bro."
Did the left really seriously think that Pizzolato intended to settled this question Once and For All with a miniseries?
And how did they think this would be established/proved in the context of the show? I suppose it might have been Hart who had the belief-system-shaking revelation; but Hart's philosophy has always been very superficial. He claims to believe in God, but has never shown any interest in the matter, apart from mouthing the socially-approved position on God. He's never been seen in church (or even talking about going to church), or praying, or questioning, or seeking God at all.
To the extent he has a philosophy, it just seems to be one of convenient self-justification.
So subverting that wouldn't have been any big shakes. Hart probably would have shrugged it off after a day or two.
The show never spent much time on Hart's beliefs. It was always about Cohle's. Ergo it was pretty obvious that Cohle's philosophy, and not Hart's, would be put to doubt.
As for the rest of it: The Big Conspiracy was barely addressed at the conclusion of the show; one cop attempts to tell Harrelson more about it, and Hart says, basically, "Yeah I don't care about those details." Thus a lot of fan speculation (including mine) was categorized by the writer as "Not really what this is about."
Some may be disappointed by this; I wasn't, because I've been reading Pizzolato's many interviews, in which he says over and over "We're not trying to trick you" and speaks a lot of "my serial killer," singular. So soon after my "euthanasia cult" theory, I realized the writer intended a more conventional plot, and I was Trying Too Hard to be Clever.
The show ultimately was, as Pizzolato said, not about the serial killer at all, but about the two men, Hart and Cohle, and their long, rocky relationship with one another.
And it's about mystery. The serial killer plot is a pretext to explore mystery -- and evil -- and philosophy -- and sex -- and all the rest of it, but in the end, the show was about the mystery and muddle of life. Not about some Hannibal Lecter-like supercriminal and his lunatic beliefs.
In the end, he wasn't the interesting one; the heroes were the interesting ones.
Life is about mystery. Anyone who thinks he knows the answer to all of life's mysteries hasn't given nearly enough thought to life.
This is the essence of the human experience. And it's very, very different from the world as perceived by pure partisans and ideologues.
These two worlds are largely separate.
Ideology and certainty are useful in politics -- but they are the death of art.
Alas, our friends on the left, who fancy themselves to be quite sophisticated aesthetes, are pretty sure that political identity and cult loyalty is pretty much the sum and extent of the human experience.
* In fairness, my plot-related speculations were almost all wrong. Hart's daughter was not revealed to have been molested (but that hint remains there). Hart's daughter did not join the cult and was never in danger. The cult was not an euthansia cult (though the killer's iconography suggests he was releasing people from the "evolutionary mistake" of consciousness).
But in terms of character arc, I felt a bit more certain (though not 100%) that Cohle would have a serious belief-shaking epiphany. If you set a guy up as knowing everything there is to know in Episode One, he's got to not know everything by Episode Eight.
Chekov's gun, you know. If a gun is shown on the wall in Act One, it must be fired by Act Three. Otherwise, the gun should not be on the wall.
Rand Paul To Ted Cruz: I Met Ronald Reagan (Once), My Dad Was An Early Supporter of Ronald Reagan. Senator, You're No Ronald Reagan.
—DrewM.
Ukraine is quickly becoming a proxy war. Not between the West and Russia but between Ted Cruz and Rand Paul on foreign policy.
Yesterday on ABC's This Week Ted Cruz followed up on a position he brought out at CPAC trying to walk a line between the John McCain school of Bomb all the Places and what many believe to be Rand Paul's libertarian Leave Them All Alone And We Can Be Friends approach to the world.
"I think U.S. leadership is critical in the world. And I agree with him that we should be very reluctant to deploy military force aboard," Cruz explained. "But I think there is a vital role, just as Ronald Reagan did."
Last month, Paul suggested that some Republicans were "stuck in the Cold War era" because they wanted to "tweak Russia all the time."
During the interview, Cruz pointed out that Reagan "changed the course of history" with his aggressive stance towards Russia, suggesting that perhaps a perspective like Paul's might have led to different results.
I don’t claim to be the next Ronald Reagan nor do I attempt to disparage fellow Republicans as not being sufficiently Reaganesque. But I will remind anyone who thinks we will win elections by trashing previous Republican nominees or holding oneself out as some paragon in the mold of Reagan, that splintering the party is not the route to victory.
I met Ronald Reagan as a teenager when my father was a Reagan delegate in 1976. I greatly admire Reagan’s projection of "Peace through Strength." I believe, as he did, that our National Defense should be second to none, that defense of the country is the primary Constitutional role of the Federal Government.
There is no greater priority for Congress than defense of the nation.
I also greatly admire that Reagan was not rash or reckless with regard to war. Reagan advised potential foreign adversaries not to mistake our reluctance for war for a lack of resolve.
What America needs today is a Commander-in-Chief who will defend the country and project strength, but who is also not eager for war.
Paul also points out that hawks considered Reagan's willingness to negotiate with the Soviets as proof he was soft on Communism. One prominent conservative of the time even went so far as to call Reagan "a useful idiot" for the Soviets (sorry kids, you didn't build the "true con" vs the rest of the world fight. It's old. Very old.)
I can't tell you how much I hate the idea of the GOP focusing on foreign policy, especially Russia (unless things change a lot between now and then) but it looks like we're going to have at least a temporary fight over it.
I want to like Rand Paul but he just makes me nervous.
It's hard to shake the feeling that if you just scratch the surface enough his dad's craziness will be there.
On the other hand, I like his shrink the government instincts and his attempt to round off some of the harsher edges of the various GOP voting blocs to try and get them to fit together better. I don't know if you can square social conservatism with the more secular leaning fiscal-con wing but at least Paul is trying. Casting drug legalization and prison reform as moral issues of failure and forgiveness might be a bridge between social-cons and his more libertarian base. They don't have to love each other, just see one another as people who aren't directly opposed to the other's goals or hostile on a personal level.
Paul is really good at this stuff and does it in way that isn't condescending or more true-con than you.
Look at his invocation of his dad in that piece. People like me who are freaked out that Rand may just bit a chip off the old crazy bloc get a subtle reminder that Ron Paul maybe a kook but he was an early adopter of the thing we profess to hold dear. Now he skirts over the fact that Reagan would have been appalled by a lot of the things we know Ron Paul was writing about at the time but that's details most people who aren't political junkies will know about. They'll just get the message that the Paul family are old time Reaganites, isn't that nice!
The same goes for Paul's outreach to black voters. He knows he's not going to win a significant number of black voters (but an insignificant number in the right place could help a lot). It's about being "a different kind of Republican". He's not saying Republicans are racists he's just showing that he's a different kind of Republican. And who will be impressed by the nice young man who isn't like all those other crazy Republicans? White swing voters.
There's a lot I like about Paul (and Cruz) but I just can't shake the feeling we're one slip away from the mask slipping and finding out it's really Ron in there. That may not be fair and it may not be true but it's something I think a lot of people who might be incline to support him feel. If his name was Rand Smith it would be a lot easier to get on board with.
Of course there's also the whole, first term Senator with no executive experience hasn't worked out too well recently thing. That obviously cuts against both Paul and Cruz.
Either way, you don't need a time machine to get to 2016. It's here and the fight is on.
Added: Via @allahpundit, Rand Paul's been busy. He also has a piece in Time urging the US to be tough on Putin over Ukraine.
Senate Democrats will hold a "talkathon" on global warming tonight into tomorrow. No doubt they're desperate for some media coverage on anything other than the economy, Obamacare, national security, and foreign policy.
Poll: a Democratic firm finds (PDF) Rep. Cotton up over Sen. Pryor 51-42% among definite voters. 46-46% among likelies.
Because Salon writer, Randa Jarrar, thinks it's horrible and racist that non-Arab women dare to belly dance as she declares in this article:
Whether they know it or not, white women who practice belly dance are engaging in appropriation.
...Women I have confronted about this have said, "But I have been dancing for 15 years! This is something I have built a huge community on." These women are more interested in their investment in belly dancing than in questioning and examining how their appropriation of the art causes others harm. To them, I can only say, I'm sure there are people who have been unwittingly racist for 15 years. It's not too late. Find another form of self-expression. Make sure you're not appropriating someone else's.
Apparently 'appropriation' is the latest crime-du-jour on the left which seems to be the act of engaging in an art form originally developed by someone who doesn't look like you. Which is to say your skin hue and ethnic background determine which artistic genres you are allowed to engage in. A more perfect definition of artistic racism would be hard to come up with. But then the Left is ever creative with defining their racism away and discovering new race crimes that you're guilty of.
Essentially the bargain that any president, I think, strikes with the American people is: "you give me this office and in turn my fears, doubts, insecurities, foibles, need for sleep, family life, vacations, leisure is gone. I am giving myself to you." And the American people should have no patience for whatever is going through your head because you've got a job to do.
...And so how I think about it is that you don't make that decision unless you are prepared to make that sacrifice, that trade off, that bargain and I think that what's difficult and important for somebody like myself who has a wonderful forbearing wife and two gorgeous young children is that they end up having to make some of those sacrifices with you," he continued. "And that is a profound decision that you don't make lightly.
So NYC has banned the indoor use of e-cigarettes and LA is considering banning them from public areas and businesses despite the fact that they consist of only water vapor, flavoring and nicotine and pose no known threat to anyone.
And the FDA says they will consider e-cigs as a tobacco products - even though they contain no tobacco.
The Food and Drug Administration has said that it intends to regulate e-cigarettes in the same way that it regulates tobacco products, but the devices actually don't contain tobacco-only nicotine.
Why? Mostly likely a combination of not really understanding what e-cigs are, the reflexive desire to ban things they don't like, and the hunger for more taxes.
Advocates such as Massachusetts Democrat Ed Markey, who co-sponsored the bill in the House of Representatives, said the plan is about more than just saving energy. Markey actually issued a press statement proclaiming: "In addition to the benefits of energy saving, less crime, fewer traffic fatalities, more recreation time and increased economic activity, daylight saving just brings a smile to everybody's faces." I'm not buying it.
Redistributing daylight is the kind of zero-sum game that underlies the liberals' vision of the world. The hour of daylight in the evening comes at the expense of the morning. At least it is in fact only a zero-sum game.
So Rachel Canning, 18, of Oak Park, NJ didn't like living under her parents' rules and ran away to live at her best friend's house. And now she's suing her parents for child support, medical bills, college expenses and legal fees.
It's a long involved story but my conclusions thus far are that 1) she's an extremely selfish and spoiled girl, 2) her parents were possibly too lenient but seem like normal loving parents, and 3) there's something very odd about the best friend's wealthy attorney dad bankrolling her lawsuit. So far the judge doesn't seem to be buying her arguments.
Spaced-Out Challenge: Messier Marathon Mega-Thread (Part 2)
—CAC
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Messier 87, the "Monster" of the Virgo Galaxy Cluster, courtesy NASA/HST
Welcome again to the Spaced-Out Challenge! Whether you have a question about equipment, a new astronomical discovery you want to expand on, or just want to kick back and enjoy the cosmos above, come one come all on our weekly astronomical journey.
This week, we continue our beginner's guide to the Messier Marathon, the best nights for which are coming on Saturday, March 29th, and Sunday, March 30th. We stopped our hunt of Charles Messier's “nuisance nebulae” around Midnight, leaving our galaxy for island universes beyond. Now, it's time to go straight into the heart of the Virgo Galaxy Cluster. Tiny smudges of light, some fuzzy, some with faint arms, but all right before your own eyes: a view at the grandest of scales we can see. Come, let me show you.
At Midnight, the Virgo Galaxy cluster is riding high, giving you an excellent opportunity to pick off a massive number of Messier objects, and to enjoy some of the finest galaxies in that or any catalog. The brightest stars- Arcturus, Spica, and Regulus- are joined by a brightening Mars, so use these as your anchor stars, and align your map above accordingly.
Messier 53: A(nother) Globular in Coma Berenices.
Coma Berenices is a faint constellation susceptible to light pollution, but from your dark sky location, its magnificent star cluster and faint main stars are plainly visible. Looking to your south, and about midway up from your horizon, it forms an upside-down L above Virgo. Aim your binoculars at the southernmost main star Ithe brightest in the small constellation), and you'll notice a small, fuzzy patch of light: the globular cluster M53, an ancient cluster of over 100,000 stars about 65,000 light years distant.
The Black Eye Galaxy (Messier 64)
Sketch by Per-Jonny Bremseth
About a binocular's FOV north and west of Alpha Coma Berenices (the star you used to find M53) lies the striking galaxy M64. The Black Eye gets its name from the striking dark band of absorbing dust in front of the galaxy's bright nucleus, visible in most telescopes from a dark site.
The Suburbs of the Virgo Cluster
Beneath downtown Virgo are two contrasting galaxies in the Messier catalog.
Messier 61
Image by Jack Newton
A beautiful small spiral, M61 was initially mistaken for a comet by Charles Messier, but was cataloged as a nebulae after it hadn't moved over several observations. It has been relatively active: six supernova have been observed and cataloged since frequent observations began.
Messier 49
Image by Jan Wisniewski
One of the brightest galaxies in the cluster, this giant elliptical galaxy was erronously thought to be more massive than M87 (see below). While it can't claim that brag, it is still a monster, stretching a full 60,000 light years wider than our own Milky Way. This is one of the easiest galaxies to see because of it's brightness. Averted viewing can help bring out the faint fuzziness enveloping the very bright core.
Messier 85
Image by Jan Wisniewski
Another reasonably bright one in the cluster, M85 is a lenticular galaxy populated by older yellow stars. A faint hazy blob in small telescopes, don't let it's appearance fool you: this galaxy is at least 25% larger than our home.
Downtown Virgo
Messier 100
Image by ESO
One of the most beautiful spirals in the Messier catalog, it is another bright member of the Virgo Group. Lord Rosse mentioned it as one of his 14 spiral nebulae in 1850. It isn't hard to see how it earned the designation of being a "grand design" spiral. From a dark site, amateurs can see the central regions of this galaxy as a faint elliptical patch in small telescopes or good binoculars. Under very good observing conditions, suggestions of the inner spiral arms can be glimpsed in 4" telescopes or larger, and more of the "grand design" can be teased out with an 8" dobsonian.
Messier 98
Sketch by Jeremy Perez
Fainter and thus a bit tougher to see, this edge-on spiral is best found by hopping from star 6 Com. It's dust-filed disk obscures most of the nucleus.
Messier 99
Sketch by Lord Rosse
Another nearly face-on spiral galaxy, M99 boasts the record for the highest receding velocity speed, moving through the cosmos at over 1200 kilometers a second. Some star formation regions can be teased out with larger dobsonians.
Messier 84, Messier 86 & Markarian's Chain
Sketch by Eric C Graff
Markarian's Chain is a “string” of galaxies discovered by it's namesake to have the same proper motion through the cluster, and is anchored on one end by M84 and M86. It's fainter members really pop out in scopes of at least 4” of aperture. Lying right smack between Vindemiatrix in Virgo and Denebola in Leo, I've used the chain as a starting point for observing all of the Messiers in this section. Take your time and see how many you can actually spot beyond the obviously bright Messiers. Can you see the “eyes” ?
Messier 87 lies at the heart of the cluster, as well it should: this monstrously massive elliptical galaxy is one of the largest known. It's supermassive black hole spits out a relativistic jet of plasma that poses a challenge all it's own for owners of very large dobsonian telescopes- many have claimed visual observations of it!
The trio of Messier 84, 86, and 87 are bright enough to spot with even crappy binoculars, so long as you are observing from a dark sky. Amateur Jeremy Perez shares his sketch and thoughts on these three:
The broad stretches of the Virgo Cluster of Galaxies are a real treat telescopically, but what does it look like through binoculars? And not just any old astronomy-grade binoculars, but really crummy ones? Well, I and my twenty dollar laughing-stock 10x50 binoculars are happy to say that you can indeed enjoy these galactic poofs on a bino-budget. But you'll still need a dark sky on your side.
Drawing a bead--and a crick'd neck--on the heart of the cluster slowly revealed two soft patches that are the bright galaxies, M84 and M86. M86 was the brighter of the two, and appeared more strongly concentrated at its core. It was also hard to miss the soft glow of M87 as it hugged a nearby eighth magnitude star. With some patience, a much more elusive smear appeared east of M86 from the combined light of NGC 4435 and 4438. I also noted a soft glow due south of M86 that turned out to be the unresolved glow of a grouping of stars in the area.
So, what can I say? If your current choice of binoculars gives you just a wee touch of shame, but you've got a dark sky to play with, go ahead and grab those dogs, and a pack of ice for your neck, and give some Virgo galaxies a shot. You may be pleasantly surprised.
A stunning spiral galaxy for small telescopes, as the sketch above shows, the classic swirling shape is unmistakable. If many of the other galaxies seem underwhelming in your smaller instrument, aim for the one that never disappoints.
Messier 91
From stunning and bright we switch to a far more difficult object for the amateurs, but rewarding to cross off your list, M91, one of the fainter galaxies in the cluster and one of the faintest of all the Messier objects.
Messier 90
One of the larger spiral galaxies in the cluster, M90's tightly-wounded, bright arms appear to be devoid of star formation.
Messier 89
Sketch by Jeremy Perez
Arguably one of the most circular elliptical galaxies easily visible by amateurs, some compare it's appearance to smaller globular clusters, but don't let it's compactness fool you: it's at least a billion times more massive than our most impressive globular.
Messier 58
Image by Adam Block/Mount Lemmon SkyCenter/University of Arizona
A barred spiral, small telescopes show only its bright nucleus, giving it an elliptical appearance. Under good conditions, 4-inch scopes or better reveal an oddly shaped halo enveloping the core. Hints of the bar structure begin with telescopes of about 8" of aperture.
Messier 59 & 60
Messier 59 is the flattened galaxy at lower left, Messier 60 the more massive of two on the right
Slightly flattened and less massive than M49 or M87, Messier 59 is still an impressive elliptical galaxy with more stars than our own. It's close proximity to M60 means both can pop into view at very low power.
A monster lies within the bright, giant elliptical galaxy M60: HST observations have revealed an object with a mass 2 billion times that of our sun, likely a supermassive black hole that could eat the Milky Way's lunch several times over.
***
Don Machholz compiled an excellent star/galaxy hopping sequence for all of these galaxies for his Messier Marathon Observer's Guide, if the map seems too condensed to plan your own hop. Remember to work at low power in your telescope, or mount your binoculars for additional stability, and dive in:
From Denebola (Beta Leonis), go 0.3 deg N and 6.8 deg following (E) to star 6 Comae. From here go 0.5 deg preceding (W) to find M98.
From M98 go 0.5 deg S, 1.2 deg following (E) to M99. [It is near a mag 6 star]
From M99 travel 1.0 deg following (E), 1.4 deg N to M100. [2 mag-6 stars point to it from 6 Com]
From M100 go 0.6 deg following (E), 2.4 deg N to M85 and faint NGC 4394 (10' E)
From M85 sweep 5.3 deg S to find M84 and M86 in one field, together with a number of fainter NGC galaxies including NGC 4388; 15' NE of M86 is the interacting pair NGC 4435/4438.
From M86 go 0.6 deg S, 1.1 deg following (E) to M87.
From M87 go 0.2 deg N, 1.2 deg following (E) to M89.
M90 is 0.3 deg following (E), 0.7 deg N of M89.
From M90 travel 1.2 deg preceding (W), 1.2 deg N to M88.
M91 is situated 0.1 deg N, 0.8 deg following (E) of M88 - same low-power rich-field.
From M91 sweep 0.6 deg following (E), 2.7 deg S to M58 [situated east of and near a mag 6 star]
From M58 go 0.2 deg S, 1.1 deg following (E) to M59. In the same field should be M60 (0.1 deg S, 0.4 deg E) with its fainter companion NGC 4647.
From M60 travel 3.4 deg preceding (W), 3.5 deg S to find M49; from M49 go 2.0 deg preceding (W), 3.5 deg S to M61.
In small instruments, these may appear as lumpy patches of light. But thanks to our understanding of the universe, we now comprehend (or try to) that each is much like our home galaxy, filled with black holes, comets, pulsars, gas clouds, suns, moons, and planets. The next time you walk on a beach, consider the sand beneath your feet. Now imagine our sun as a grain of sand. At that scale, our Milky Way would be a sand castle five stories high (if all of the suns were packed together, which we know is certainly not the case). As impressive as our own backyard may be, there are more stars in the galaxies beyond than there are grains of sand on Earth. Our home is a speck too small to even imagine, in a star field too smushed to resolve, in a galaxy barely discernible for an intelligent being on the other side of the universe.
End of Part 2
If you've followed this guide successfully so far, congratulations: you've knocked out over a third of the Messier objects, with the Spring and Summer targets rising up in the last part of our guide.
Remember, tonight is also the relaunch of COSMOS (this version featuring Neil deGrasse Tyson), which will air at 9pm on FOX and all non-news FOX channels (FX, FXX, etc), the latest trailer of which you can see here:
***
The full Beginner's Buyer's Guide, our Comet Guide (featuring additional grab-and-go telescopes), and any other edition you're looking for can be found in the master index of all Spaced-Out Challenge threads here, but of course you can always inquire about binoculars, telescopes, and all the rest in the comments. As always, if you have astrophotography, product recommendations, or astronomy news you'd like to see on a future Spaced-Out Challenge, email me at theoneandonlyfinn (at) gmail.com, or tweet me @conartcritic.
If you have any more questions about your new optics, feel free to ask below. Until next time, clear skies to you, and keep looking up!
On March 23rd, we finish our Messier Marathon Guide. See you in a few Sundays!
Good evening, Traveling morons! For those of you not in Arizona, Hawaii, or the Navajo Nation -- did you remember to set your clock forward for daylight savings time? Inspired by this horrible event, today’s theme is “G-D It I’m TIRED So This Is What You’ll Get And LIKE It!”
Seriously, though, I am really wiped out after a couple of late evenings last week and spending most of yesterday afternoon in the garden. So I apologize, but the thread will be a little bare bones today.
Time zones are strange old things, especially the way they prescribe one time to thousands of miles of land mass—so this visualization shows which parts of the world experience unusually early and late hours of daylight as a result
If I’m reading this map correctly, they’re saying that my location gets sunrise a little late, but the sun stays up longer. Sadly, I haven’t been able to zoom it up well enough to tell with certainty. Moreover, our house’s placement relative to the mountains may negate the effect to some extent. I confess I’m more of a morning person, so I guess I’d be better off in Greenland!
On a related notefrom xkcd, “Now” lets you visualize the current time anywhere in the world at any given moment in time that you check it. Kind of fun.
Last week when I was thinking of today’s topic, I decided to focus on travel destinations that are known for seasonal festivals and events, mostly because that’s a type of travel that I really enjoy myself. Well, I have a lot of links, but not much energy to assemble them into a coherent post… but, what the heck, l’ll put the links out there for you all to enjoy at your leisure.
A favorite type of festival at Casa Y-not are arts festivals. We love them, whether they be elaborate week-long affairs or just small ones in our local home town. Heck, we even liked the one that Lafayette, Indiana held each year in May. ‘Not sure I’d travel to attend it, but if you’re in the area it is definitely worth a visit.
We’ve been several times and it never disappoints. The weather is fantastic, the art is top-notch, the venue is lively but comfortable (not too crowded), and there are great food and music options as well. Plus, it coincides with Spring Training, so we can double up on our activities. I highly recommend this festival, especially for couples – wives can enjoy the festival and husbands can catch some baseball.
It's many months away, but another one that we really enjoyed (also in the Southwest) is held in the Fall in Taos, New Mexico. It’s been several years since I’ve been (our schedule tends to explode in the Fall), but my recollection is that it was a wonderful event and the scenery in the area is spectacular.
A second major type of festival that many people enjoy are music festivals. We’ve heard a lot in recent weeks about the South by Southwest (aka SXSW) music festival that is happening now in Austin, but did you know there’s also a South by So What? festival in Grand Prairie, Texas? It’ll be held next weekend. If you’re in Florida, you might want to check out Hard Miami in a couple of weeks. Or go to this site to find a music festival near you.
The third major type of festivals that many people love are Food and Wine events. When we lived in Chicago the big thing to do was to go to Taste of Chicago in the summer. We did it one year and were so appalled by the crowd size and the horror of walking on several inches of rib and chicken bones that we never went again – but some people love it. A little more our speed might be the Palm Desert Food + Wine Festival which is held later this month. (Palm Desert is nice, but I haven’t been to this festival.) Of course, the Phoenix area has numerous festivals during the winter and spring months.
Perhaps the most unique festival I ran across while researching is the Virginia Fly Fishing and Wine Festival. Held in mid-April in the bustling burg of Waynesboro, Virginia, this festival combines fly fishing with food and drink. Sounds kinda fun!
To wrap up, how about a few silly quizzes to entertain you?
Via a site called Best Trip Choices, here’s a travel “personality” quiz to identify your travel style. I came out as a “Mid Venturer,” aka a “Pioneer”. (Any of our Utah or LDS morons should get a chuckle out of that given that I’m in Utah now!) The quiz seems reasonable in terms of travel style identification, but the trip choices it offers based on that are pretty lame, imho.
Interpol: More "Suspect Passports" On Malaysian Flight Than At First Thought
—Ace
This is all via @rdbrewer4.
An Interpol spokeswoman said a check of all documents used to board the plane had revealed more "suspect passports" that were being further investigated.
"The fact that we are unable to find any debris so far appears to indicate that the aircraft is likely to have disintegrated at around 35,000 feet," said the source, who is involved in the preliminary investigations in Malaysia.
More of the story (most of which you probably already know) here.
The state-run Thanh Nien newspaper cited Lt. Gen. Vo Van Tuan, deputy chief of staff of Vietnam's army, as saying searchers in a low-flying plane had spotted an object suspected of being a door from the missing jet. It was found in waters about 56 miles south of Tho Chu island, in the same area where oil slicks were spotted Saturday.
"From this object, hopefully (we) will find the missing plane," Tuan said. Thanh Nien said two ships from the maritime police were heading to the site.
An authority told Reuters that it was too dark to be certain the object was part of the missing plane, and that more aircraft would be dispatched to investigate the site in waters off southern Vietnam in the morning.
Possibly a terrorist attack, though so little is known now this is speculation:
[A] former intelligence official told Fox News that the information about stolen passports from two adjacent European countries, combined with recent warnings for flights to the United States about the risk of possible shoe bomb attacks, is concerning
Those passports were from Italy and Austria, and were stolen in Thailand.
There is a precedent for a modern jetliner to fall from the sky while "in the cruise" and lie hidden for months, according to CNN aviation correspondent Richard Quest.
On June 1, 2009, Air France Flight 447 was en route from Rio De Janeiro to Paris when communications ended suddenly from the Airbus A330, another state-of-the-art aircraft.
It took four searches over the course of nearly two years to locate the bulk of flight 447's wreckage and the majority of the 228 bodies in a mountain range deep under the ocean. It took even longer to find the cause of the disaster.
A plane is at its safest point when it is cruising.
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I am doing double-duty as cook and nurse -- there is flu in Chez Dildo! (I rock the outfit however, so there is that silver lining. You know how much white stockings cost in my size?). But I haven't been able to poke around the cooking section of my local bookstore, looking for inspiration, or just something to plagiarize.
I have been thinking about the difference between recipes and technique. Most people with reasonable hand-eye coordination and a well-written recipe will be able to cook that recipe with minimal trouble. The problem is that many recipes assume too much or, even more frequently, just don't make perfect sense.
In my experience, the venerable (hah) NY Times food section recipes are often just rough guides, and occasionally will be off significantly. A year or so ago they had a recipe for sourdough rye bread that was missing a few cups of liquid. And that's were an understanding of technique would help. But most people reflexively assume that if it's published then it's going to work as described. And yes, I made that mistake, and had to add more and more starter liquid and water until it looked like a manageable dough. Had I been firmly grounded in baking technique, my first reading of the recipe would have yielded a snort, a laugh, and a loud, "Ah, the idiots are at it again!"
Technique is nothing more than a general understanding of what happens to ingredients when they are treated a particular way. Most of us are reasonably proficient in grilling technique -- what happens to a piece of steak of x thickness on a fire of y temperature over z time. No recipe can cover all of the variables, but with that simple technique, we can grill anything.
The trick is to find good recipes, and divine the underlying technique. And once you know the technique, you really don't need a recipe. And then you will be a real cook.
This was really driven home to me by a friend of mine who is a superb bartender. I won't call him a mixologist because he thinks that's an asshole term, to be used only to describe pompous hipsters with delusions of grandeur. And if I called him one he might stop making me smoked bourbon old-fashioneds, and that would ruin my life.
But...he once explained that there are some basic ratios (basic technique) for cocktails, and if you stick them you'll be okay. And bartending is just cooking, but (mostly) without heat.
IAMNOTAMANHATTAN
3 oz. Evan Williams Bourbon (Or any reasonable quality bourbon)
½ oz. Dry Vermouth
½ oz. Sweet Vermouth
3 dashes Angostura Bitters
½ oz. Cointreau
Stir in lots of ice
Strain into cocktail or lowball glass
Garnish with a twist of lemon
This, as the name suggests, is not a Manhattan, but it’s damned close, as well as being damned good.
Try it with Rye Whiskey for a spicier, slightly less sweet drink.
Finally made my way through Out There and got the bad ending. I really dig it but after awhile, you really wish there was a bit more to it as there is a limit in how many times you can sit through doing the same three tasks over and over again (drill planet, buy upgrades and move to new solar system). Sure it looks pretty in a 60's pop art look and the random events help to add a little spice but it becomes a bit boring.
Been playing this music based FPS that is currently in Alpha which I can't talk about since it's NDA to all hell which kinda sucks as there is quite a bit of interesting stuff going on in it.
DARK SOULS 2 (360 & PS3) - Oh how I hate that the PC release isn't coming till next month but I have to make due. At least for the first half of the year, this is the biggest release IMO. This is pretty much a direct sequel to the first game and it looks so damn good. It's a third person action-rpg and you will die a lot. That being said, it's FROM so expect some FPS chugging and questionable looking assets for the console versions.
TitanFall (Xbox One & PC) - Well, Microsoft is banking pretty damn hard on this being a huge hit that moves some consoles. As someone who has played in the alpha and beta, it's a ton of fun that is really only hampered by the fact that the game is pretty ugly (even downsampled from 4K on a PC doesn't make it a looker). The campaign mode should be interesting as wrapping a narrative that they're trying to aim for around some standard online multiplayer matches is a concept that is relativily new. 360 owners get it in two weeks.
Yoshi's New Island (3DS) - If you're not tired of the glut of platformers from Nintendo, they're gonna stuff another into your piehole. At least this one has a different art style than all of the Mario games from the last year and no eardrum splitting crying from Baby Mario.
Atelier Escha & Logy: Alchemists of the Dusk Sky (PS3) - Never really got into the Atelier series but it has it's fans. The series main focus is all about item crafting and this one is no different. The game is split into two so you can choose which character to play as.
AOSHQDD- The Special Congressional Election in Florida (CD13)
—CAC
We are just two days away from the special election between Republican David Jolly and onetime Democratic gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink. Let's go through a quick breakdown of the district, past voting results, and how I see the race as it stands two days before the final decision.
First, C. W. Bill Young served as Congressman in this increasingly-Democratic swing district for decades, easily surviving redistricting with much of his original district well contained within CD8, then CD6, back to CD8, then CD10, and most recently CD13. While he carried the seat easily in 2012, Mitt Romney lost it to President Obama by about 1.4%. Two years prior, these same precincts voted for Charlie Crist over Marco Rubio in the senate race and Alex Sink over Rick Scott in the gubernatorial one. The district has voted for a Republican Presidential candidate three times in the last 30 years: 1984, 1988, and 2004. Casting “moderate” votes and pulling in the pork, Young built off of the slight Republican registration advantage in the district and kept the seat safe for the GOP, easily winning every single re-election.
With his passing in 2013, the seat instantly became a toss-up, and, with the entrance of well-known Democrat Alex Sink, lean Democratic per most analysts. As the weeks have passed and mail-in returns have rolled in, that analysis looked solid: Republicans enjoyed high single-to-double digit advantages in the mail-in returns for the 2012 and 2010 contests, but only a 2-point edge in this special election. Early in-person voting trends Democratic, and it has, giving the Democrats a current advantage (as of Saturday night) of about 230 votes.
The spending in the race has been astronomical: over $12 million has been devoted, mostly by outside groups. A grab bag of PACs have so far spent $4.9 million for Jolly, $3.7 million for Sink, while the candidates themselves have raised $1.2 million and $2.7 million respectively, giving Sink the slight edge in this metric. Ads have gone beyond the saturation point: the average resident of the district is being bombarded to the tune of over a hundred a day.
However, there has been a late “surge” in mail-in returns that have some Republicans hopeful of an upset: the mail-ins (again, as of Saturday night) now break five points in the Republicans' favor, spreading three points in a week. If that trend can continue, it may hit the magic number needed for Jolly to squeak out a win (I peg that number at 7%, since polling has shown an unfortunate number of Republicans (1 in 6) voting for Sink).
Any considerable edge in the mail-in vote will make a big difference, because a sizable majority of the total vote will have been cast before Tuesday: the current tally of mail-ins and early votes is now over 120,000 and we are forecasting a total vote of under 200,000 (special elections for Congress have exceeded that number only twice in the last decade). Assuming another 10,000 mail-ins and early ballots are cast, that means less than a third will be on Tuesday. If Republicans enter Tuesday with a net 5-6% edge in 2/3rds of the vote, you can see how it would be hard for Sink to finish the winner.
As we have seen in other close house races, a monkey wrench has been thrown in this one, hampering Republican efforts. Senator Rand Paul is reaching out to voters to help candidate Jolly neutralize a threat from Libertarian Lucas Overby, who has been polling between 4 and 7% of the vote. Overby has no conceivable shot at winning, so he has become a spoiler in Republican efforts to hold the seat: I project Sink with a 3-5 point lead as of today (barring, again, that “surge” sustaining through Tuesday), making his “small” share of the vote substantial.
So what should you take away from all of this? If you live in FL-13 and haven't already done so, MAIL IN YOUR RETURN if you have one. If you are an outside observer, understand the fundamentals of the race (party breakdown, past electoral preference, campaign spending) favor the Democrat, Alex Sink. Again, I see her winning by 3-5 points, but keep an eye on the early vote tallies by party from Pinellas County. Lastly, we will have live coverage of the returns on Tuesday night, the first crowd-sourced demonstration of AOSHQDD since 2012, so I encourage you all to tune in as we watch the first of many head-to-head contests in midterm 2014. JohnE, after being heavily medicated, is working furiously on the site and graphics. It should make for a fun night, regardless the result.
Moms Demand Action!!11! and receive ... this? OK. Whatever.
Facebook and its photo-sharing subsidiary Instagram Wednesday announced new policies aimed at stemming online sales of illegal guns.
The social media platforms have agreed to remove reported posts that evade gun laws, restrict minors under the age of 18 from viewing posts about firearm sales and provide education to better inform law-abiding sellers of guns.
Yeah, there are lots of policy issues we can discuss and debate the details of, but Carson's statement that people's second amendment rights should be conditional based on where they live is a deal breaker.
That's the S&W No. 3, Third Model, in .44 Russian.
Connecticut
I've seen a bunch of stuff flying around the Interwebs about pushback on Connecticut's "assault weapons" registration scheme re police refusing to enforce the law. None of it is sourced worth a crap, and I won't link it here. But I'll keep looking.
Hickock45 On The GOTW
Tips
If there are topics you're interested in seeing in the gun thread, please send them to AoSHQGunThread at gmail. You can also send them to me on Twitter at @AndyM1911.
**UPDATE**
Commenter JPS cautions that the news reporting may be way off in saying that the student was making molotov cocktails. Unfortunately, nothing very definitive seems to have been published to counter the media reports, but I did find this statement:
"We have worked closely with other law enforcement agencies during the investigation of this tragic incident," Robert Connolly, interim police chief for Georgia Tech, said in an emailed statement. "The FBI has relayed that, to date, they have not developed any information or evidence indicating criminal intent in this investigation."
Vietnamese authorities searching waters for the missing Boeing 777 jetliner spotted an object Sunday that they suspected was one of the plane's doors, as international intelligence agencies joined the investigation into two passengers who boarded the aircraft with stolen passports.
It's still early days. Keep praying for survivors.
**UPDATE**
Commenter Ricardo Kill provides this update, suggesting that the wreckage is not from the missing Malaysian Air flight:
SEPANG - The Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) has denied that the debris found near Vietnam's Tho Chu Island was from of the missing Malaysia Airlines MH370 airplane.
DCA director-general Datuk Azharuddin Abdul Rahman said authorities have confirmed that the objects spotted floating in the sea about 100km south-southwest off the island did not match the body of the missing aircraft.
Let's hope that the subsequent investigation is thorough and not hampered by political correctness.
Food Thread: Special Addition -- Beer: A Primer [Beerslinger & CBD]]
—Open Blogger
Chronicles from a Beerslinger
The next installment of that beer odyssey thing...
"64oz. to Freedom"
Okay so it's a rip from Sublime's '40oz. to Freedom' album, but that doesn't fill my growler, so 64oz. it'll have to be. Feel free to play the album along with the writings herein. It was, after all, my muse.
Can there be a better way to enjoy this first balmy weekend in what seems like millennia to many of us, than with some far from serious beer banter?
I'm not bragging when I state I am an epicure, just sayin'. That now said, I do not in any way proclaim to be a connoisseur, and without fault in my beer tastes. Tastes, after all are subjective; and sometimes mostly, arbitrary. That's where your comments come in. I'll insert a fancy science video to embolden my claim, (and make me feel a little scientific on a Sunday morning), that all tastes are unique and singularly subjective. 'Cause I ain't got no time for conflicting points of view.....I step into the great unknown...
Okay so they focus on smell & sex in this study, but this can be relevant to your time here since your sense of smell is the centerpiece to your tastes. This study could also be a good tie in to WeirdDave's human harvesting tutorial in his and Y-not's Gardening thread yesterday...as can beer.
So, gettin' on with it, a fellow Moron suggested, "just stick with the basics man, you know? Styles..." Seemed kinda dull to me at the time, but I'll give it a swig...but I gotta focus on one or two in particular, just to get the writing going. Plus..It's that Lenten season time and I feel the need to bear alms by enlightening others, even if just for one lost beer soul. (It also gives me an excuse to drink beer.)
Lagers
Don't take these unassuming beer styles for granted. This beer deserves R-S-P-C-T! I used to drink lagers only when I didn't want to get into trouble, alas, in my (somewhat) wiser years I've learned, trouble always finds me. So I figure, why not? YOLO as the hipsters a little late to the game are sayin'.
Not to be judgmental, (I'm only human after all), but I find the majority of lager drinkers tend to prefer the volume of beer that they can consume in a session over the alcohol by volume content of the beer itself. You can work out the math on that one. And if you can't, you might just fall over. If that happens, do NOT go back for more! Cameras are everywhere and making an ass of oneself is poor enough, doing it on camera makes it epic, so as an advisor (and for tax reasons), I need to insert this public service announcement...
When it comes to lagers I lean toward the Black Lagers, Imperial Lagers and hoppy Lagers, sometimes referred to as IPL's or Imperial Pale Lagers. What I'm trying' to say right here is that we have a lot of hybrids these days. Relish in it! Be thankful for these feats of innovation. It is capitalism, at it's best, that has allowed such yeasty, hoppy & malty beverages to flourish to new heights, and hypes.
I just so happen to be a capitalistic thinking, beer minded advocate. Only in a capitalistic society do we see people going to great lengths to make things greater; cash into money, coffee into cola, cola into energy drinks, whiskey into anesthesia, dirt brown marijuana into super green hybrid strains sold by our government, coke into crack cocaine, oxycodone into heroin, heroin into a better high with a mixed in pain killer - (on the black market sometimes known as the Ace of Spades, mind you!), a million dollars worth of debt into a trillion, (okay so that's not so much a capitalist model), and brewing mediocre beer into a gorgeously crafted beer with bountiful body and breadth. Anyway, I think you catch my drift. Especially if you're standing in close proximity.
In my quest to find a liking for Lagers, I stumbled upon an Imperial Pale Lager, (IPL moving forward), that I really like. IPLs strive to be, as the name implies, hoppy lagers...with a higher alcohol content. Whenever you see the word 'imperial' you can bet your ass the alcohol content will be higher than in the more traditional styles. So drinker beware.
Hoponius Union by Jack's Abby Brewing is the one that floats my IPL boat right now. I don't have a fancy picture for it. (I broke the bottle.)...and my boat is inflatable. It's got hops and it's got dankness going on. I am, at heart, a hop head, so this beer has my name all over it. Wow! I never thought I'd say that about a lager! Maybe I should file for a name change to beerlager? Nah, that could be taken out of context.
OK, I guess I have to pair it with food now....no pressure.
I'm reaching a little here, but I kinda think I'd definitely enjoy this beer more with a pig foot! Bessie really said it better....
IPA's
India Pale Ales. Unlike the lager above, this is an ale. Brewed at a higher temperature, they offer more flavor. An India Pale Ale is what the letters mean for those that need a little 101'ing.
Gonna go Jai Alai here on you britches. Cigar City, Tampa FL.
Jai Alai offers a citrusy flavor with a hint of pine. Think western hops infused with the pines of the eastern shore. Bold upfront, but invitingly smooth at the finish which gives her a gracious dash of easiness, allowing for clarity in taste and thought.
Yes, I agree, there are a lot of fine IPAs out there. I've been spoiling myself with Bear Republic's Racer X straight outta the tap. Then there's Stone, Ballast Point, Weyerbacher, Bell's, Firestone, and many other fine breweries making just as good an IPA. But I had to zero in on one that was readily available in the cellar.
Doesn't Play well with Friends....
Switching gears to a Russian Imperial Stout Thirsty Dog's Siberian Night, Imperial Stout. First mistake was over chilling this beer. It came out of the frigidaire like a frozen chocolate mousse cheesecake that just needs some time to sit out. A dessert beer? A goodnight beer. An "I might just get laid" beer. Outta Akron, Ohio, home of the Rubber Bowl & the Good Year Blimp Factory. This beer is heavy and light. Full of great contrasts, it is solid.Thirsty Dog's Siberian Night Imperial Stout won't disappoint.
9.7% ABV, so Lookout!
Because I got a late start and I got other shit to do, although I'd rather keep doing this, I guess it's time to close it up....don't forget to turn your clocks forward....=
Sunday Morning Book Thread 03-09-2014 [OregonMuse]
—Open Blogger
Yes, This Is English
Good morning morons and moronettes and welcome to AoSHQ's prestigious Sunday Morning Book Thread. For non-book related discussions, please use Andy's open thread below. Thanks.
Ye Fyne Olde Wordes
Author Mark Forsyth likes to write about old words that are no longer in use, but perhaps should be. This article lists a few of them, and I was surprised how many of them describe aspects of the moron lifestyle. For example, an "ultracrepidarian" described as "somebody who gives opinions on subjects they know nothing about." I guess that's more hoity-toity than 'blowhard' or 'ignoramus'. Or, "fudgel", a verb which means "pretending to work when you're not actually doing anything at all." And then there are the snecklifters, who "poke their heads into a pub to see if there's anyone who might stand them a drink."
I'm still looking for a word with a definition that means something like: "a person with (at best) mediocre ability and accomplishments who have nonetheless obtained a high status position because others are greasing the skids for them."
Like this new kid, Ronan Farrow, whom ace wrote about earlier this week.
Or, for that matter, Barack Obama.
Last Words of Famous Authors
Here is a little mix-and-match game. Try to figure out who said what without Googling. Winners get a "Get Out of the Barrel Free" card, good for one formatting screw-up.
1. Emily Dickenson
3. George Bernard Shaw
3. Henry David Thoreau
4. Washington Irving
5. Edgar Allan Poe
6. Dylan Thomas
7. H. H. Munro (Saki)
8. Plato
a) "Put that bloody cigarette out." (immediately after which he was killed by a sniper's bullet)
b) "Well, I must arrange my pillows for another weary night! When will this end?"
c) "Lord, help my poor soul."
d) "I've had 18 straight whiskies... I think that's the record."
e) "Sister, you're trying to keep me alive as an old curiosity, but I'm done, I'm finished, I'm going to die."
f) "I thank the guiding providence and fortune of my life: first that I was born a man and a Greek, not a barbarian nor a brute; and next, that I happened to live in the age of Socrates."
Totally serious question: Can anyone recommend some good (by which I mean "not using the 'Marxist-feminist lens' or Zinning it all up") historians to read about Russian history?
Posted by: HR needs a beer at March 06, 2014 12:18 PM (ZKzrr)
A History of Russia by Riasanovsky, which is claimed to be the standard. The linked copy is way expensive, but you can get used copies for considerably cheaper.
Those are from the Horde. I just finished Child 44 this week (good page-turner) which is set in Russia during Stalin's reign of terror. Here are the books that author Tom Rob Smith listed in the afterward that helped him understand those perilous times:
Of all of these, Smith says, "I cannot recommend any of these books highly enough."
Har.
Dave Barry has read the execrable '50 Shades of Grey' so you don't have to. And, not only that, he has written a take-down review worthy of P.J. O'Rourke. That's the good news. The bad news is that he wrote it for the execrable Time magazine. So you have to go there and give them traffic to read it, and thus help them delay their withering death by attrition and neglect, which I've been wanting for a long time. Oh, well. I can't figure out what to excerpt from Dave Barry Learns Everything You Need to Know About Being a Husband From Reading 50 Shades of Grey, so you'll have to just read the whole thing yourself.
And on a related note, according to the Lost Angeles Times, the execrable 'Fifty Shades of Grey' trilogy has topped 100 million copies in worldwide sales.
Seattle’s Mars Hill Church paid a California-based marketing company at least $210,000 in 2011 and 2012 to ensure that Real Marriage, a book written by Mark Driscoll, the church’s founding pastor, and his wife Grace, made the New York Times best-seller list.
Apparently there's a marketing company, ResultSource Inc. (RSI), that claims to be able to do this for you. What RSI does is organize a network of buyers that make purchases at locations which are "likely to generate reportable sales for various best-seller lists, including the New York Times list."
Mars Hill also paid for the purchase of at least 11,000 books ranging in price from $18.62 to $20.70, depending on whether the books were purchased individually or in bulk. The contract called for 6,000 of the books to be bought by individuals, whose names were supplied by the church. Another 5,000 books were bought in bulk.
Is this ethical? I don't know. On the one hand, RSI is clearly trying to game the system on behalf of its clients. On the other hand, who cares? This reminds me of those stupid quiz shows scandals of the 50s, which resulted in congressional hearings, and federal legislation. Really? C'mon, it's a game show! It's entertainment. It's as authentic as professional wrestling. Everybody knows that.
And who, really, is being hurt?
Of course, the other aspect to this particular case is that it's a church that's doing this, and for Christians, there are other considerations. If I were a tithing member of Driscoll's church, I'd probably be asking the leaders questions as to what they hoped to gain by purchasing this doping-the-horses marketing plan, and is this really a wise use of church funds? $210,000 is a lot of money to be throwing around, and maybe it could be put to better use.
The Granddaddy of Urban Myths
In New York City in 1964, a 29-year-old woman named Catherine “Kitty” Genovese was stabbed to death in three separate attacks as 38 bystanders stood around and watched and did nothing. The NY Times called it "a frozen moment of dramatic, disturbing social change." This sensational case provoked an anxious outcry and launched a sociological theory known as the "Bystander Effect."
I remember finding a link (now lost) some time ago that debunked a lot of the Genovese murder story, so some information has been out there, but now author Cook has researched and written
Another "tell" from this book is that Genovese was a lesbian. OK, I never knew that. But I have no idea why this is important. The man who killed her was a standard-issue psychopath and his selection of victim was pretty much random. I don't know how her sexual preference contributes to the story. But under the new rules of public discourse, I guess I'm supposed to applaud now.
Something Else I Did Not Know Until Now
The Oscar-winning movie '12 Years A Slave' is based on Solomon Northup's autobiography of the same title. Various inexpensive Kindle versions are available.
So that's all for this week. As always, book thread tips, suggestions, rumors, threats, and insults may be sent to OregonMuse, Proprietor, AoSHQ Book Thread, at aoshqbookthread, followed by the 'at' sign, and then 'G' mail, and then dot cee oh emm.
What have you all been reading this week? Hopefully something good, because, as I keep saying, life is too short to be reading lousy books.
Overnight Open Thread (3-08-2014) - [Niedermeyer's Dead Horse]
—Open Blogger
CDR M is still trying to recover from his big Oscars party of last week, so you’re stuck with me. I warned him against drinking raspberry Sparkletini, but did he listen? Noooo. Truth be told, I think he’s still skeeved out by the sight of these two cuddling at a pre-Oscars party:
The recent discussions of Ronan Farrow, he the award-winning journalist, master of such pieces as this interview with Miley Cyrus, has brought another incident to mind. The fawning over Farrow, despite his lack of genuine accomplishment, is quite something to behold, with members of the leftist-elite, including no less than Hillary Clinton, fawning over him like fools. It is this desire to be associated with any semblance of Hollywood royalty that led some who should have known better to invite a complete stranger into their homes, offering both money and shelter in exchange for proximity.
Before Will Smith, there was David Hampton. In 1983, in a long-running con that would later inspire Smith's role in the 1993 film Six Degrees of Separation, Hampton inveigled his way into the lives of New York City's upper crust by pretending to be the neglected son of actor Sidney Poitier. Hampton would hang around the Columbia University campus, getting unsuspecting people to house him, give him money or otherwise help him. Hampton even once reportedly showed up at the home of actress Melanie Griffith, where he stayed up talking until 4 a.m. with actor Gary Sinise. Hampton would often go to restaurants and pretend that Poitier was meeting him just to get free meals and lavish attention, only to later act as if he had been stood up. But Hampton's undoing came when he was caught by Osborn Elliott, former Newsweek editor and dean of the Columbia School of Journalism, in Elliott's home in bed with another man. Elliott alerted authorities and the jig was up. No charges were pressed, but Hampton was forced to pay $4500 back to people whom he had swindled and stayed with.
Hampton continued to scam for the remainder of his short life and eventually died alone, of AIDS, at the age of 39. His greatest success having been to mock the “limousine liberals”, the white elites of New York City.
Slow clap, Ronan Farrow. Slow clap, indeed.
The AFL-CIO would like to shame you for the use of the word “thug”
Golly gee. I feel so bad about it now. In addition to thugs, the unions are manipulative little poops as well.
A few nights ago there was a fantastic link to a graphic which demonstrated the enormity of space. It was awe-inspiring and left me feeling utterly inconsequential. This perspective is just as interesting and mind-boggling and shows our place in both the macro AND the micro universe. I can’t embed the graphic so CLICK HERE to view it. Scroll all the way to the left to really get the full picture.
Glass half full. I don’t feel quite as tiny now.
First there was the bleeding armadillo cake from Steel Magnolias, now comes a frighteningly realistic cake in the image of a yellow python. The detail on the head is remarkable. The fourth image is particularly freaky.
Massachusetts takes action to outlaw upskirt photos by perverts but only after the outrage over one such perv who escaped completely scot-free.
The Supreme Judicial Court on Wednesday overturned a lower court's ruling against Michael Robinson, 31, of Andover, who was arrested in August 2010 by Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) police for allegedly using his cellphone to take pictures up women's skirts. In an eight-page ruling, Justice Margot Botsford wrote that a female passenger wearing a skirt or dress is “not a person who is ‘partially nude,’” referring to so-called Peeping Tom laws protecting people from being photographed or recorded when nude or partially nude.
Remember this face, ladies. He argues that violating your privacy is his “constitutional right”:
Knitters Gone Wild: A Vancouver, WA woman has taken knitting to a whole other level of silliness, knitting cozies for turtles and snails. Be sure to click the Etsy link to view her complete line.
Russia states that they have successfully tested an ICBM. Moron Cool Czech has detected something askew.
Rocket cats of war: A 16th century German document has revealed what appears to be a plan to unleash the cats-of-war and I can’t help but giggle. As a cat owner I feel quite certain that this scheme would not have advanced beyond the testing phase.
Tonight’s ONT brought to you by: ‘OMG! Look at the size of those feet!’
Please feel free to send any complaints or commendations to me at Twitter: Nied's Dead Horse
I’m not in the least bit worked up about this. It’s a shame but the colleges had an agreement with Chrysler and abuse of that agreement cost Fiat millions. Further, the college admits that there is little educational value in the car. Then, there’s this little bit of wackiness:
“It’s like the day Kennedy was shot,” Norm Chapman, automotive technology professor at SPSCC, said. “No one will forget where they were when they heard the news.”
Is pot really to blame for these accidents? Unlike alcohol, marijuana can remain in the bloodstream for weeks after it has been consumed -- possibly affecting driving skills, possibly not. (Consider this: CNN found that Washington's limit of five nanograms of THC per milliliter of blood wasn't nearly high enough to negatively impact driving.) The study's authors caution that their findings don't indicate that the drivers were impaired from pot at the time of their accident, only that they had used pot sometime in the recent past.
Beware Mother's bearing scientific "data".
Lifestyles of the rich and infamous:
It seems that "Wow!" means the same thing everywhere.
Beauty of the week:
I can only think of a couple cars introduced in the last dozen or so years which are worth as much now as when they were new, and neither are getting cheaper. The incredible Ford GT is one, and the BMW Z8 presented here is the other.
While it’s hard to argue with the opinion that the Ian Callum designed Aston Martins are the most beautiful cars of this generation, I feel the Z8 deserves the spot at the top. While BMW’s goal was to build a car that looked like a modern day 507, and it did capture the grace of that car, the proportions and aggressive stance made it something of a modern Bavarian 427 Cobra. And there’s not a bad line on the car, it’s wonderful from any angle, an achievement very few cars can claim. From the retro interior with the banjo steering wheel, to the neon taillights, I love everything about it. Plus, it powered by the 4.9 liter V8 from the E39 M5, so it’s got that going for it. Simply superb.
The Home & Garden Show season is in full swing, which is to say that it seems to be nearly over in much of the country. However, our local show is this weekend, so it only just now hit my radar. Never having been to one of these shows before, I didn’t know what to expect. So armed with my trusty camera phone and the $10 admission fee, I headed off to the show on Friday afternoon. The sacrifice it required for me to mix and mingle with the Great Unwashed Masses inside a hot, chaotic convention center when I could have been enjoying a beautiful Spring day was considerable, but what can I say? I’m a giver!
I arrived shortly after the three-day event opened. The venue was large, noisy, and poorly ventilated. It took me about an hour and a half to walk up and down all of the aisles too look at all of the booths, stopping at a handful that interested me.
Upshot? It was much more of a “home” than a “garden” show. So my dreams of having tons of content for today’s post were quickly dashed. I did find the mix of displays to be “interesting”. In addition to the usual home improvement contractors, there were a few cheesetastic crafts booths, a bunch of cookware displays (and demos), numerous chiropractors, one baker (I bought a loaf of pumpernickel bread from them), MANY MANY mattress displays, even MORE booths hawking sheets, some financial planners, and a couple of crematoria and mortuary booths! Sadly, the crematorium one was not directly adjacent to the barbecue display – THAT would have been comedy gold!
Out of hundreds of displays, there was one unique one displaying prototypes of a hydroponic wall system. The idea is that you’d mount this self-contained unit on a wall in your house. The inventor claimed that using this system you can grow several heads of lettuce (or whatever plant you choose) each week. (There is also a light fixture, but they had not gotten that set up yet so it’s not in the photo.) Anyway, it was the most unusual thing I saw there so I thought I’d share it with you:
Wall-mounted hydroponic growing unit developed by Fahrenheit70.
I gotta say, there is a certain appeal of having a wall-mounted system for growing herbs, if it actually worked and was attractive. I’d rather have that than potted plants cluttering my kitchen window sill.
So aside from Killer Robot Spider Lamps, what are the hot trends for your garden this year? According to the Lawn and Garden Retailer magazine, here are some of the things to look for 2014. (You’ll note how on-trend this blog is – we hit the first one right out of the gate!)
1. Ground Up: Recycling food scraps and creating compost is the new recycling.
2. Super Foods, Super Models: Edibles are going to the next level with foodies growing everything from quinoa to dandelions in straw bales and keyhole gardens.
What’s a “keyhole garden,” you ask? Well, it’s a type of circular raised bed with an active compost pile in the center. The keyhole refers to a notch in the structure that extends to the center of the bed for access to the compost pile.
Diagram of a keyhole garden design taken from the Inspiration Green website.
Keyhole gardens were popularized in Africa, but work very well in other hot, dry climates. They can also be quite attractive:
Make sure to follow the link to read more about these cool garden structures.
Back to the trends list,
5. Bee-neficials: It’s all about the bees this year. Bees are at forefront of environmentally aware consumers’ minds, inspiring them to plant native, pollen rich flowers, trees and veggies to provide safe shelters.
Don’t we have a few bee-keeper morons and moronettes here? If there’s enough interest, we can devote a post to this topic. I admit, I know nothing about bee-keeping. Courtesy of Popular Mechanics, here’s a quick primer on getting started keeping your own bees.
9. Young Men Get Down and Dirty: Big surprise here: young men 18-34 are spending $100 more than the average gardener. They are grilling, growing their own hops for beer, and taking the kids out to play in the dirt.
I guess this makes sense, although I’m not sure I’d classify a 34 year old as “young,” despite my advanced age. It’s also a good excuse to post this picture of a somewhat older man getting “down and dirty” for the moronettes:
(BTW, Mike Rowe is popular with older ghey dudes. Don’t ask me how I know. shudder)
Finally, per the gardening trends report
11. Fingertip Gardens: Gardens go high tech with mobile apps and technology.
I found some great lists of high tech garden gadgets at Mashable and Urban Gardens. A lot of these gadgets are designed to remind us to feed and water our plants, so I guess I’m not the only forgetful gardener out there!
To wrap things up, this week my Blog of the Week is not really a blog, per se, but the Utah State University Cooperative Extension site. It’s really quite good. In addition to gardening and agricultural information, there’s also quite a bit on food preservation and storage, which I think is of interest to some of our morons. If there’s one thing Utah is known for, it’s PREPPERS!
And now for the comedy stylings of WeirdDave!
(Please note: it should go without saying, but this post is a work of satire, as are most of my gardening posts. SAT-IRE. Google it. Then read Swift, Jonathan “A Modest Proposal”. Then lighten up, Francis)
Today we’re talking about gardening gadgets. There are any number of labor saving devices that one can deploy to make their gardening life easier, but one in particular comes to mind. It is endlessly efficient, yet be warned that it can be difficult to work with. You can get many, many years of productive use out of one, and in fact it is a generational tool. Properly treated, it is a tool that will in the fullness of time produce other tools that will make the toil of your twilight years immeasurably easier. Acquiring one, however, is not for the faint of heart, and care and maintenance is a full time job in and of itself. I am talking of course about a kid.
A kid is the perfect gadget to make your gardening life simple. Properly utilized you can support one on just a small portion of the food that it raises, leaving the lion’s share of the harvest for your enjoyment. Kids also enjoy working outdoors with their hands and have a primal connection with the soil. Put a kid to work in your garden and it will be grateful for being given a purpose in life.
Pictured: Gratitude
The hard part about deploying a kid in your garden is acquiring one. Kids are literally everywhere, so you would think it would be easy just to pick one up without anyone missing it. Such is not the case. The quaint kid dealer, operating out of a rusty Dodge van with the traditional “Free candy” logo is a thing of the past. Kids are able to bite and scratch so it’s hazardous to attempt to harvest a free range one from a local playground, and other people value their children for the work they do in their gardens, so they tend to keep a weather eye on them. No, the way to go is to produce one yourself, but I warn you, the process is daunting.
Back off buddy, my peas need picking, get your own.
The first thing you need to produce your own kid is a woman (this guide is written from a male perspective. I have no idea how, or even if, women think). Women are all over the place, they’re the ones with the bumpy things on their chests. In order to produce a kid, you must find a likely woman ( Pro-tip: not all women can produce kids. For best results find one between the ages of 18-40 ). Once you’ve located a woman, you must approach her. Your approach should be tailored to the woman you chose. With younger women, a conversation about vampires and werewolves works well. Women over 30 are more likely to respond to overtures featuring feelings, approval of nesting behaviors and an admiration of something called “knick-knacks”. A longing to “make a good home with someone” and a desire to “love unconditionally” can enhance your appeal. Once you find a good woman, the wooing commences.
Woman bait
Wooing is a very complicated subject that is probably beyond the scope of this guide. There are plenty of very informative resources available online, Google them. The end game here is to convince a woman to mate with you, and that’s where the horror begins. I am presenting this information here in a clinical manner. We are gardeners, we pit our wit and ability against the unfeeling anger of Mother Nature. Our calling is not for the faint of heart, and as distasteful as this section may be, I ask you to find the nerve inside yourself to absorb the information with a stout heart. I ask this not lightly because in order to produce a kid of your own, you must engage in.......sex.
At some point after you have located a woman and wooed her, you will find yourself alone with her, probably in a bedroom, and the two of you will disrobe. Standing naked before each other, it’s time for the sex to begin. Observe the woman. Notice that while you have a proud pee pee, she does not. Do NOT feel sorry for her lack, and most especially do not point it out to her, it’s not her fault, nature made her that way. Reminding her that she doesn’t own a willie will only lead to bad feelings. The first thing you have to do is make your pee pee stand up. Stroke it gently and tell it how much you like it. Flatter it. Soon enough it will become interested and stand up tall and proud. You’ll be able to look right at its hole and it will look back at you (true fact: this is where the phrase “seeing eye to eye” comes from). Ask your wooed woman to lie down. Here’s where it gets ugly.
Sex
If you examine the nest of hair the woman has between her legs, you will find that there is an opening there. You must (shudder), put your pee pee into this opening. Once it’s in, slide it out, but unfortunately not all the way. Push it back in (I know, I know). Do this again. And again. Keep doing it until a warm feeling envelopes you and your pee pee does something like peeing (pro tip: It’s NOT peeing. Do not pee at this point or most likely you’ll have to start all over again finding another woman. If she doesn‘t demand this, forget gardening, your life is about to become a carnal hell from which you won’t escape. Word to the wise). At this point it’s traditional to say something meaningless, “You were great, baby” usually suffices. Now you wait. If you’re very lucky, within a few months your woman will start to make a baby out of food. You’ll know this is happening because she’ll start to glow and put on weight, plus when you come home she’ll greet you with a drawn gun and a demand for pickles and ice cream. (pro tip: Get them for her. For God’s sake, get them for her. Immediately) If you’re not lucky you’ll have to do the “sex” thing again until it takes. 9 months later your very own kid will arrive! Now you can start training him or her to garden for you. This process takes some years and really should be the subject of another post.
I apologize for the graphic and horrifying nature of this post, but if you want the ultimate garden gadget there really isn’t any other way to get it. I know the process described herein is distasteful, but the results are well worth it. My hope is that the garden labor saved by utilizing a kid will, in time, more than compensate for the terrifying method that is required to get one.
Josh Kraushaar, National Journal: Time for Truth in Labeling: Obama Is Not Centrist Someone thought he was a centrist? "It's a useful corrective to the notion, fueled by the White House, that the Republican Party alone is responsible for gridlock in Washington. But Kohut downplays one significant factor that has expedited the Democratic polarization: President Obama himself." [rdbrewer]
Sean Trende: Another Look at Dems' Chances of Losing the Senate "All the modelers seem to agree that the Democrats’ Senate majority is in real trouble, and that they may even be underdogs in their quest to keep it. The current polling certainly bears out this view...." [rdbrewer]
Victor Davis Hanson: Obama: Ike Redivivus? "[A] persistent myth has arisen that Obama is reminiscent of Eisenhower — in the sense of being a president who kept America out of other nations’ affairs and did not waste blood and treasure chasing imaginary enemies." [rdbrewer]
Jonathan S. Tobin: The Media’s Obama Protection Society "But, as Dylan Byers wrote in Politico, Attkisson had an even bigger problem: most of her colleagues at CBS didn’t like the fact that she had spent the last few years reporting aggressively about the Obama administration’s various shortcomings and scandals. Journalists at mainstream media outlets like to pretend that they play it down the middle when it comes to whoever is in power." [rdbrewer]
Manly Slang from the 19th Century "Eternity Box. A coffin. Fart Catcher. A valet or footman, from his walking behind his master or mistress." Via @davereaboi. [rdbrewer]
NBC: Scientists Suggest Dark Matter Played Role in Dinosaurs' Doom "Randall and Reece suggest that there's a thin, dense disk of the stuff running along the midplane of our Milky Way galaxy. Our solar system traces an up-and-down, wavy motion through that plane as it travels around the galaxy...." So every 30 million years, we get bombarded by comets. Via HotAir. [rdbrewer]
Joseph Curl: Today’s GOP really is Reagan’s ‘Big Tent’ party "[The press] misses that the Republican Party really has once again become the 'Big Tent' that President Reagan once set as a top goal. It is, as several top party leaders have said recently, full of warriors fighting it out on 'the battlefield of ideas.'" [rdbrewer]
Stephen F. Hayes: Obama’s Fantasy-Based Foreign Policy "For five years, the Obama administration has chosen to see the world as they wish it to be, not as it is. In this fantasy world, the attack in Fort Hood is 'workplace violence.' The Christmas Day bomber is an 'isolated extremist.' The attempted bombing in Times Square is a 'one-off' attack. The attacks in Benghazi are a 'spontaneous' reaction to a YouTube video. Al Qaeda is on the run. Bashar al-Assad is a 'reformer.' The Iranian regime can be sweet-talked out of its nuclear weapons program. And Vladimir Putin is a new, post-Cold War Russian leader." [rdbrewer]
• Micth McConnell, three days ago at CPAC: "If I'm given the opportunity to lead the U.S. Senate next year, I won't let you down." • Mitch McConnell, yesterday: "I think we are going to crush them everywhere," referring to Tea Party efforts. • Mitch McConnell, tomorrow: "Aww, I didn't mean that. Y'all are going to help me beat that Democrat in November, right?" [rdbrewer]
In 1946, an armed group of WWII veterans took on a corrupt Democrat sheriff and his deputies to retrieve stolen election ballot boxes. The Battle of Athens TN 1946 Some factual background info here. [dri]
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