— Matthew Arnold, born in 1822
We are living in volatile times. Passions run high, and that’s a good thing. Things are changing fast, especially in arenas like the yammer activism crowd, and it causes confusion with the outside world. . .
As Benjamin Franklin said, “Either we all hang together, or we will all hang separately.”
To paraphrase the Beatles: you get by with a little help from your friends CL, colleagues TF, LM, MO'N, and fearless advice from your Best half ....
The two Bertrand Russells. It's common to believe that the philosopher gave way to the political hack. But that account is simplistic... Political Spinner
Canadian waters eyed for first permanent retirement home for whales
TEACH WOMEN NOT TO MURDER: Mount Holyoke prof tried to kill colleague in case of unrequited love, police said.
Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, December 29, 2019 – Four highlights from this week: What You’re Unwrapping When You Get a DNA Test for Christmas; Ring and Amazon sued in federal court over security concerns; Smart Home Tech, Police, and Your Privacy: Year in Review 2019; and Fake and dangerous kids products are turning up for sale on Amazon
We are living in volatile times. Passions run high, and that’s a good thing. Things are changing fast, especially in arenas like the yammer activism crowd, and it causes confusion with the outside world. . .
As Benjamin Franklin said, “Either we all hang together, or we will all hang separately.”
To paraphrase the Beatles: you get by with a little help from your friends CL, colleagues TF, LM, MO'N, and fearless advice from your Best half ....
My Obituary
Will it merit a full column in The Post or The Times
or just a squib by a relative late for work?
Will it mention awards I didn’t win,
poems that didn’t quite scan,
and how a student asked me once
if “To a Daughter Leaving Home”
was my penance for driving a daughter away?
It will surely say I was born in the Bronx,
spending the first few weeks of my life
in the hospital nursery, alone. Which may
account for my chronic melancholy
and why I keep blaming my surgeon father
who tried to do his best for me
but whose anger always mirrored mine.
Some obituaries written years in advance
are stored in the newspaper’s basement vault,
like turkey vultures asleep in their nests,
just waiting for death to catch up with life.
Let any newspaper where my obituary appears
be used to keep the floor clean under the dog’s dish.
And let my “survived by…” children remember me
not by a list of ambiguous facts collected
like so much mathematical data, but by my usual
obsessions: rising bread and falling leaves.
Against the Blitz Wolf — Russian Reinforcements for Iran’s Defence in War Against All John Helmer
or just a squib by a relative late for work?
Will it mention awards I didn’t win,
poems that didn’t quite scan,
and how a student asked me once
if “To a Daughter Leaving Home”
was my penance for driving a daughter away?
It will surely say I was born in the Bronx,
spending the first few weeks of my life
in the hospital nursery, alone. Which may
account for my chronic melancholy
and why I keep blaming my surgeon father
who tried to do his best for me
but whose anger always mirrored mine.
Some obituaries written years in advance
are stored in the newspaper’s basement vault,
like turkey vultures asleep in their nests,
just waiting for death to catch up with life.
Let any newspaper where my obituary appears
be used to keep the floor clean under the dog’s dish.
And let my “survived by…” children remember me
not by a list of ambiguous facts collected
like so much mathematical data, but by my usual
obsessions: rising bread and falling leaves.
Against the Blitz Wolf — Russian Reinforcements for Iran’s Defence in War Against All John Helmer
The two Bertrand Russells. It's common to believe that the philosopher gave way to the political hack. But that account is simplistic... Political Spinner
Canadian waters eyed for first permanent retirement home for whales
Fortunately, America has a Newspaper of Record to cut through the postmodernism, and it’s called theBabylon Bee.
TEACH WOMEN NOT TO MURDER: Mount Holyoke prof tried to kill colleague in case of unrequited love, police said.
- "If life without death has no value and meaning, and if life with death has a value and meaning that death itself eventually takes away, then this signals one of the greatest tragedies of human existence" -- Adrian Moore (Oxford) on immortality
Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, December 29, 2019 – Four highlights from this week: What You’re Unwrapping When You Get a DNA Test for Christmas; Ring and Amazon sued in federal court over security concerns; Smart Home Tech, Police, and Your Privacy: Year in Review 2019; and Fake and dangerous kids products are turning up for sale on Amazon
Preserve Your Democratic Norms: Lessons from a Dark Time
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Wall Street Journal op-ed: I’m Jewish. Please Wish Me a Merry Christmas., by Mark Oppenheimer:
It was the day before Thanksgiving, and I was at my local coffee shop in New Haven, Conn. I had just finished ordering my preferred espresso drink, and as I paid for it the barista said to me, with good cheer, “Happy Thanksgiving, if you celebrate it.” I was genuinely nonplused, and so, without considering how rude it might sound, I blurted back, “Who doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving?”
As it turned out, the barista was right there with me. “I know, right?” she said. “But I wished someone a happy Thanksgiving yesterday, and she got annoyed and said, ‘Not my holiday.’ So I’m just being careful.”
I felt her pain. Nobody likes to offend, and Lord knows people do take offense. As Christmas approaches, that worry becomes particularly acute: what to wish people as Dec. 25 nears? My advice in this season—when we proffer many season’s greetings, to strangers of indeterminate beliefs—is just what I said to the barista about Thanksgiving: “Don’t be so careful. Just say what you feel.” Yes, as a proud American Jew, I hereby give permission to my Christian, and secular but Christmas-minded, friends to keep alive the robust, specific “Merry Christmas,” abjuring the weak, vague “Happy Holidays.” ... It’s a perfectly fine way to greet me, even though Hanukkah is my seasonal holiday (albeit one of relatively little religious import). ...
Alcohol nearly destroyed me but four years later I have transformed my life
My long journey from alcoholism to jail is finally over and this is what I've learnt about finding a purpose in life, writes Alyson Colquitt.
I always find it hilarious when I’m told I’m not in favor of fighting back, and that I think everything is all right.
This is sort of like when I get accused of being an optimist and a pessimist for the exact same post. Or when my most apolitical books get flagged as political. Or…
Sometimes people are reading hieroglyphs written on the inside of their eyelids. Kind of like people who decide I want open borders. Or you know, that I run around twitter threatening people (My twitter account might be suspended. I recently clicked a link a friend sent me, with something funny about Portugal, and I tried to answer but the comments never showed and it said something about my account being suspended. Which frankly affects me not at all. I mean, it echoes these posts, is about it.)
JUST A FEW IDEAS: How to Fight Back
How Culture Was Used As A Weapon During The Cold War
Not only was literature politicised: sometimes it seems that any cultural initiative had the secret services of the US or the USSR behind it. We find the Soviet Union was backing the Scientific and Cultural Conference for World Peace, whose sponsors included Leonard Bernstein, Frank Lloyd Wright, Langston Hughes and Paul Robeson. The CIA, set up in 1947, had an equivalent faith in the potency of literary debates and publications. – The Guardian
French Protest Proliferation Of Street Advertising Everywhere
High tech video billboards are multiplying in city spaces across the world, woven into the fabric of everyday life, from ribbon videos down escalators on the London underground, to French metro corridors, New York taxis, bus-shelters, newspaper kiosks, and – increasingly – broadcast from shop windows onto the street. They are becoming more sophisticated and interactive, with the potential to collect data from passersby; increasingly bright and inescapable – impossible to click off or block like you can online. But in France, there is fresh debate on how urban planners and local councils should limit them in the public space for the sake of our overloaded eyes and brains. – The Guardian