Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders paid an impromptu visit to a Verizon workers’ picket line in Brooklyn on Wednesday after being endorsed by New York City transit workers as he tried to wrest a bit of union support from rival Hillary Clinton.Popcorn.
The Brooklyn-born Sanders addressed an enthusiastic crowd of striking workers from Verizon Communications Inc as “brothers and sisters” and thanked them for their courage in standing up to what he characterized as corporate greed.
It was a scene tailor-made for the U.S. senator from Vermont, who has focused on income inequality in his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. Sanders is trying to catch up with Clinton, the front-runner, in Tuesday’s primary in New York, a state both candidates have called home.
Workers cheered as Sanders criticized the mammoth communications company for wanting to take away health benefits, outsource jobs and avoid federal income taxes, calling it “just another major American corporation trying to destroy the lives of working Americans.”
Solidarity, Baby.
Workers of the world, unite!
"Sexual Racism"
So, as you may know from being exposed to left-leaning American culture, your sexuality is the single most important way in which you express your life and identity. Nothing is more important about you than the way in which you choose to love -- they mean physically love -- others. In no way can you be criticized for choosing to love many people ("No slut-shaming!") or few people ("Respect asexuals!"), members of the same sex or of the opposite sex or both (though you may be criticized for still speaking as if there were "two" sexes).
However, an important distinction has been discovered: you can be criticized for being racist in your sexuality.
If this follows the pattern of other innovations in civil rights, we will next hear that we are to be criticized for being selective based on our preference for same- or opposite-sexed partners. To be a really moral person, you need to sleep with everyone equally.
What could possibly go wrong in such an enlightened system?
However, an important distinction has been discovered: you can be criticized for being racist in your sexuality.
Christian Rudder, co-founder of OKCupid, looked at data on online dating — who people messaged, who they matched with, who they responded to, and so on — and found a few patterns. "There is kind of a systemic racial bias pretty much in every dating site I've ever looked at," he said. "We found that 82 percent of non-black men have some bias against black women. … And Asian men get the fewest messages and the worst ratings of any group of guys."So now if you want to be virtuous, you really need to be sexually active with people of various different "races." Tell your spouse it's in the service of morality.
If this follows the pattern of other innovations in civil rights, we will next hear that we are to be criticized for being selective based on our preference for same- or opposite-sexed partners. To be a really moral person, you need to sleep with everyone equally.
What could possibly go wrong in such an enlightened system?
Clinton & the Kremlin
The "Panama Papers" reveal a possible Russian intelligence connection to some of Clinton's top bundlers. It's smoke rather than fire, of course: the bank only sometimes handles funding for Russian intelligence operations, and even if they have bribed or suborned Clinton's bundlers that doesn't mean she herself is suborned.
Nevertheless, it raises important questions given Clinton's handling of things like foreign weapons sales to governments that donated heavily to the Clinton foundation, or transmission of national security secrets in the clear on an unsecured private email server. If I were an investigative journalist, I'd be very inclined to dig right here.
Nevertheless, it raises important questions given Clinton's handling of things like foreign weapons sales to governments that donated heavily to the Clinton foundation, or transmission of national security secrets in the clear on an unsecured private email server. If I were an investigative journalist, I'd be very inclined to dig right here.
RIP "Dewey" Clarridge
I don't know how many of you know the name, but he was a man. I had the honor to know him, and will miss him. We were quite different in age, but he was a friend of mine.
Back on Station
I realize I've been gone for a while, with a minor break about half a week ago. I'm back now, and should be on station for a bit.
Building Your Own Echo Chamber
In which a progressive is shocked by support for the NRA, and somehow realizes why.
DB: Pentagon "Pretty Sure" It Can Ditch FM 3-24
How much of this is satire?
The Pentagon’s top spokesperson said he was “pretty sure” the military could ditch the manual used for counterinsurgency, since it plans to fight all future wars against conventional armies that wear uniforms and use known tactics.
“Listen, COIN is over,” spokesperson Col. Steve Warren said. “There’s really no possibility that terrorists will some day take over large swaths of areas of the Middle East and quickly change their tactics against a conventional foe they are fighting.”
“We need to pivot to the Pacific already,” he added...
“We don’t know where or when our next war might be, but we can be pretty sure it won’t be in Iraq or Afghanistan, because, well, despite tens of thousands of troops fighting in those countries, those don’t technically count as wars.”
A new church building
Our new church building is going to be beautiful after all--all it took was for the old architect to retire. We lucked out in our new one.
Nothing Says 'Girl's Empowerment' Like A Headscarf You'll Be Beaten for Not Wearing
Sesame Street's heart is in the right place, no doubt. And, in truth, a hijab is downright "feminist" in the context of Afghanistan, where the conservatives insist on a full burqa if women are not to be beaten or executed.
Still... c'mon.
Still... c'mon.
"Look, I'm Just Like You!"
Who raised this woman? I've know six-year-olds who could pour a better beer. Teaching them how is one of those things a man is supposed to do. It goes with the other common-sense teachings you learn at that age.
The True and the Beautiful
Claire Berlinski is trying to understand the collapse of architectural standards in Paris after the Second World War. (H/t: Instapundit.)
If you can make art that is more real than nature, then you are refining something found in the natural world. That is what Aristotle suggests art exists to do: to perfect the natures of things. You start with the good in the world, and perfect it. Nature might provide shelter in a cave. Men taking shelter in such caves made them places for worship by decorating their walls with other beautiful scenes found in nature. Such a cave begins to be improved by being made more perfect, and thus -- this was Twain's insight -- more real.
A cathedral is just an artificial cave, in a way. Notre Dame is more real because it is more beautiful. It is more beautiful because it more perfectly realizes the goods that it was brought into being to serve.
I need to make the case that my judgments about this aren’t arbitrary. I’m saying something more objective about beauty than, “I like building A but I don’t like building B.” So I need to start with a robust theory of aesthetics. Here’s what I need it to do:I've never been to Paris, so I can't speak with much authority on the beauty of the buildings there. However, I can tell her why the beautiful and the good used to be thought connected. Here is an old post:
It needs to be able to tell us, in some detail, why Building A is more beautiful than Building B. These principles should be broadly applicable to all buildings.
It would be useful to show that these principles may broadly be applied to the idea of “beauty,” generally.
I’d like to explore the idea that it’s at least reasonable to associate “the beautiful” and “the morally good.”
This point must be based on evidence, the nature of which must be defined. So, for example, I want to look at the criminogenic quality of ugly buildings, and the way people tend to get sick and die sooner when they live in and among them.
Htom asked for a break to put his thoughts in order before we reconvened on the subject of levels of reality -- that is, whether a thing can be "more real" than another. Here's St. Augustine on the subject:The Twain discussion tracks to this earlier post, and this one. Twain's subject was Wagner's opera, which he criticized intensely -- but his admission undoes all the criticism.Look around; there are the heaven and the earth. They cry aloud that they were made, for they change and vary. Whatever there is that has not been made, and yet has being, has nothing in it that was not there before. This having something not already existent is what it means to be changed and varied. Heaven and earth thus speak plainly that they did not make themselves: "We are, because we have been made; we did not exist before we came to be so that we could have made ourselves!" And the voice with which they speak is simply their visible presence. It was thou, O Lord, who madest these things. Thou art beautiful; thus they are beautiful. Thou art good, thus they are good. Thou art; thus they are. But they are not as beautiful, nor as good, nor as truly real as thou their Creator art. Compared with thee, they are neither beautiful nor good, nor do they even exist. These things we know, thanks be to thee. Yet our knowledge is ignorance when it is compared with thy knowledge.That gives us two 'levels' of reality: God, and creation. The original claim of Mark Twain's suggested that a human creation could -- if it were also true and beautiful -- be "more real" than other things that were part of God's creation.
Confer with Tolkien's idea of sub-creation, and his creation myth in the Silmarillion. Human nature has a capacity to seize upon the True and the Beautiful as they are in other things. We can separate them intellectually from the things they are in, and think about why they are beautiful. We can take things that are imperfectly beautiful, and imagine how to make them more so. We can, in our arts, make them actually more beautiful.
If you can make art that is more real than nature, then you are refining something found in the natural world. That is what Aristotle suggests art exists to do: to perfect the natures of things. You start with the good in the world, and perfect it. Nature might provide shelter in a cave. Men taking shelter in such caves made them places for worship by decorating their walls with other beautiful scenes found in nature. Such a cave begins to be improved by being made more perfect, and thus -- this was Twain's insight -- more real.
A cathedral is just an artificial cave, in a way. Notre Dame is more real because it is more beautiful. It is more beautiful because it more perfectly realizes the goods that it was brought into being to serve.
Break: Goodnight, Merle
A sad day for the nation. I'd say for 'the country,' but this is no time for puns.
I'm sorry to see him go. He was one of the last of the Outlaw Country greats.
UPDATE: I don't know if this story about Merle's last show is true. However, it is coherent with this news report about that show.
UPDATE: A young Merle Haggard does impressions of the singers who were great in those days.
I'm sorry to see him go. He was one of the last of the Outlaw Country greats.
UPDATE: I don't know if this story about Merle's last show is true. However, it is coherent with this news report about that show.
UPDATE: A young Merle Haggard does impressions of the singers who were great in those days.
Kolejka
This game came up in a discussion on another site, and I thought the Hall would enjoy it.
Here's the description from Amazon:
Here's the description from Amazon:
Kolejka -- Queue -- Boardgame
by Instytut Pamici Narodowej
Get in a queue with your family in front of a store and experience a rush of genuine emotions! The board game Kolejka (a.k.a. Queue) tells a story of everyday life in Poland at the tail-end of the Communist era.
The players' task appears to be simple: They have to send their family members out to various stores on the game board to buy all the items on their shopping list. The problem is, however, that the shelves in the five neighborhood stores are empty.
The players line up their pawns in front of the shops without knowing which shop will have a delivery. Tension mounts as the product delivery cards are uncovered and it turns out that there will be enough product cards only for the lucky few standing closest to the door of a store. Since everyone wants to be first, the queue starts to push up against the door. To get ahead, the people in the queue use a range of queuing cards, such as 'Mother carrying small child', 'This is not your place, sir', or 'Under-the-counter goods'. But they have to watch out for 'Closed for stocktaking', 'Delivery error', and for the black pawns the speculators standing in the queue. Only those players who make the best use of the queuing cards in their hand will come home with full shopping bags.
On the product cards are photos of sixty original objects from the Communist era. The merchandise includes Relaks shoes, Przemysawka eau de cologne, and Popularna tea, as well as other commodities that were once in scarce supply.
The neighborhood also has an outdoor market but the prices there are steep unless, of course, you manage to strike a deal with the market trader. In this realistic game you really have to be savvy to get the goods. Are you brave enough to confront the everyday life of the 1980s?Appropriately, the game is only available from 3rd party sellers and the lowest price is currently $473.46.
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