Real Headline: "Rep. Ilhan Omar promotes call for GI Bill to apply to all Americans."
No limits on redistribution, apparently.
Who Doesn't Want to Depose Trump These Days?
Technically accurate headline: "Amazon wants to depose Trump after losing $10 billion Pentagon cloud contract."
Oh, right, homonyms.
Oh, right, homonyms.
Neuromancer
“We monitor many frequencies. We listen always. Came a voice, out of the babel of tongues, speaking to us. It played us a mighty dub.”In the story it was an AI. It's not hard to see how an AI could be optimized for something like this.
Hate and Anger
A worry, from David French:
But perhaps you want to stand on hate and try to banish it from Christian life. Well, then, a word from G. K. Chesterton describing the Saxon war against the Viking. King Alfred of the Saxons has received a thoughtless blow from a woman cooking cakes that leaves a red scar on his head, and for a moment he is angry with her and thinks of returning it.
Yet then he takes his anger and transforms it into an expression of hate. His hate is not against her, but against those who have deserved to be hated in the way that Aristotle suggests there are some who deserve our anger. This transformation is a kind of miracle in that it is an intervention that protects her from wrath. This little miracle enables the greater miracle of the victory to come:
In the end, you know, he brought the leader of the Danish army to Christ -- so the story goes. And if you believe the story, that which was done more sweetly for hate had a good end, indeed many good ends for many people. Salvation for some, if you believe the story, in which salvation of the soul is the most valuable prize of all. At minimum the victory brought stability for England, unity, prosperity, if you believe only demonstrable fact. But French wants to speak within the story, as Chesterton did.
Hate has no place in pro-life America. None. And embracing or defending hate—even hatred of the movement’s most vigorous opponents—for the sake of life contradicts the spirit of the movement and stands to do more harm than good to the political cause that so many Christians value the most.To what degree are you conflating "hate" with "anger"? Anger can be rational. So says Aristotle:
American Evangelicals represent one of the most powerful religious movements in the world. They exercise veto power over the political success of any presidential candidate from one of America’s two great parties. Yet they don’t wield that power to veto the selection of a man who completely rejects—and even scorns—many of their core moral values.
I fully recognize what I’m saying. I fully recognize that refusing to hire a hater and refusing to hire a liar carries costs. If we see politics through worldly eyes, it makes no sense at all. Why would you adopt moral standards that put you at a disadvantage in an existential political struggle? If we don’t stand by Trump we will lose, and losing is unacceptable.
With regard to anger also there is an excess, a deficiency, and a mean. Although they can scarcely be said to have names, yet since we call the intermediate person good-tempered let us call the mean good temper; of the persons at the extremes let the one who exceeds be called irascible, and his vice irascibility, and the man who falls short an inirascible sort of person, and the deficiency inirascibility.It's possible to be excessively prone to anger, and that is a vice; but notice that it's also possible to be deficiently prone to anger, and that is also a vice. The right soul is angry when anger is appropriate.
But perhaps you want to stand on hate and try to banish it from Christian life. Well, then, a word from G. K. Chesterton describing the Saxon war against the Viking. King Alfred of the Saxons has received a thoughtless blow from a woman cooking cakes that leaves a red scar on his head, and for a moment he is angry with her and thinks of returning it.
Yet then he takes his anger and transforms it into an expression of hate. His hate is not against her, but against those who have deserved to be hated in the way that Aristotle suggests there are some who deserve our anger. This transformation is a kind of miracle in that it is an intervention that protects her from wrath. This little miracle enables the greater miracle of the victory to come:
Then Alfred laughed out suddenly,Chesterton is here a poet, and 'anger' has two syllables while 'hate' has one. But he has a 'for' there that is disposable; he could have easily composed the line, "More sweet for anger and heart's desire," with no loss to the poetic form. He seems to be saying 'hate' on purpose, and in an explicitly Christian context in which one is commanded to love one's enemy. Alfred refuses to return a blow he has received, and instead turns his justified wrath against another more deserving.
Like thunder in the spring,
Till shook aloud the lintel-beams,
And the squirrels stirred in dusty dreams,
And the startled birds went up in streams,
For the laughter of the King.
And the beasts of the earth and the birds looked down,
In a wild solemnity,
On a stranger sight than a sylph or elf,
On one man laughing at himself
Under the greenwood tree—
The giant laughter of Christian men
That roars through a thousand tales,
Where greed is an ape and pride is an ass,
And Jack's away with his master's lass,
And the miser is banged with all his brass,
The farmer with all his flails;
Tales that tumble and tales that trick,
Yet end not all in scorning—
Of kings and clowns in a merry plight,
And the clock gone wrong and the world gone right,
That the mummers sing upon Christmas night
And Christmas Day in the morning.
"Now here is a good warrant,"
Cried Alfred, "by my sword;
For he that is struck for an ill servant
Should be a kind lord.
"He that has been a servant
Knows more than priests and kings,
But he that has been an ill servant,
He knows all earthly things.
"Pride flings frail palaces at the sky,
As a man flings up sand,
But the firm feet of humility
Take hold of heavy land.
"Pride juggles with her toppling towers,
They strike the sun and cease,
But the firm feet of humility
They grip the ground like trees.
"He that hath failed in a little thing
Hath a sign upon the brow;
And the Earls of the Great Army
Have no such seal to show.
"The red print on my forehead,
Small flame for a red star,
In the van of the violent marching, then
When the sky is torn of the trumpets ten,
And the hands of the happy howling men
Fling wide the gates of war.
"This blow that I return not
Ten times will I return
On kings and earls of all degree,
And armies wide as empires be
Shall slide like landslips to the sea
If the red star burn.
"One man shall drive a hundred,
As the dead kings drave;
Before me rocking hosts be riven,
And battering cohorts backwards driven,
For I am the first king known of Heaven
That has been struck like a slave.
"Up on the old white road, brothers,
Up on the Roman walls!
For this is the night of the drawing of swords,
And the tainted tower of the heathen hordes
Leans to our hammers, fires and cords,
Leans a little and falls.
"Follow the star that lives and leaps,
Follow the sword that sings,
For we go gathering heathen men,
A terrible harvest, ten by ten,
As the wrath of the last red autumn—then
When Christ reaps down the kings.
"Follow a light that leaps and spins,
Follow the fire unfurled!
For riseth up against realm and rod,
A thing forgotten, a thing downtrod,
The last lost giant, even God,
Is risen against the world."
Roaring they went o'er the Roman wall,
And roaring up the lane,
Their torches tossed a ladder of fire,
Higher their hymn was heard and higher,
More sweet for hate and for heart's desire,
And up in the northern scrub and brier,
They fell upon the Dane.
In the end, you know, he brought the leader of the Danish army to Christ -- so the story goes. And if you believe the story, that which was done more sweetly for hate had a good end, indeed many good ends for many people. Salvation for some, if you believe the story, in which salvation of the soul is the most valuable prize of all. At minimum the victory brought stability for England, unity, prosperity, if you believe only demonstrable fact. But French wants to speak within the story, as Chesterton did.
Dog Faced Soldiers, Pony Soldiers
Joe Biden may or may not have been thinking of these Redcoats, as the piece suggests, but the phrase "pony soldiers" is used in Hondo to refer to the US Cavalry. It differs, though, from "Dog-Faced Soldiers," who are infantry -- specifically the 3rd Infantry Division. It's their Division song; I learned it from them while working with their headquarters element in 2007 because their commanding general made them stand up and sing it to him every morning at the Battle Update Briefing.
That commanding general was Rick Lynch, who seemed very much to be attempting to reprise the role of George Patton. In spite of his cigar-chomping theatrics 3ID had a tremendous run of success during his time there, during which the entire division -- not just the headquarters but all four brigades -- were deployed from Anbar to the Mada'in, and from Baghdad to Al Hillah. The counterinsurgency campaign in that period saw violence drop by about ninety percent.
I guess he went on to become a Lieutenant General before he retired, which is pretty good. He once gave me one of his "challenge coins," which just for fun I dug out tonight to show you.
UPDATE: A reasonable comment on the 3ID page's apology for the Dog Face Soldier song:
That commanding general was Rick Lynch, who seemed very much to be attempting to reprise the role of George Patton. In spite of his cigar-chomping theatrics 3ID had a tremendous run of success during his time there, during which the entire division -- not just the headquarters but all four brigades -- were deployed from Anbar to the Mada'in, and from Baghdad to Al Hillah. The counterinsurgency campaign in that period saw violence drop by about ninety percent.
I guess he went on to become a Lieutenant General before he retired, which is pretty good. He once gave me one of his "challenge coins," which just for fun I dug out tonight to show you.
The dog is "Rocky," created by Walt Disney personally and donated to the division in what I imagine was a fit of patriotism. The coin has a notch in it, I was told, "Because Rocky took a bite out of it."
"Nous Resterons La" is a line from the First World War's deployment of the Third Division as a part of the American Expeditionary Force. It means "We'll stay here," which at the Second Battle of the Marne is just what they did.
I don't know how you get the two concepts confused, although I spent some time with various 1st Cavalry units too and it could be that they're more alike than either of them would like to admit. Maybe Joltin' Joe can throw in a "Buffalo Soldier" reference next time just for good measure.
The trouble with “honest” soldier songs is that they are generally unprintable parodies of other songs, while the trouble with “official” soldier songs is that they are generally phony-sounding, slick productions which completely lack spontaneity. At the beginning of World War II there was a need for a soldier song which could be accepted by the mud-slogging foot soldiers as well as civilian concert audiences – a song in the happy medium between “honest” and “official”.Fake but accurate, I think we call that these days.
The dichotomy we never tire of
Robert Plomin, in "Blueprint," compared popular assumptions about the heritability of various traits to the best we can do for scientific evidence for each trait. In every case but one, traits were much more heritable than people liked to think. The exception was breast cancer, whose heritability is overestimated 5x.
Table 2 How much are these traits influenced by genetics? [%] The first column of results shows the average opinions of 5,000 young adults in the UK. The second column shows results from genetic research.
Eye colour 77 95
Height 67 80
Breast cancer 53 10
Schizophrenia 43 50
Autism 42 70
General Intelligence 41 50
Weight 40 70
Reading disability 38 60
Personality 38 40
Spatial ability 33 70
Remembering faces 31 60
Stomach ulcers 29 70
School achievement 29 60
Verbal ability 27 60
Centrists and Democracy
A study suggests that support for democracy is weakest among centrist voters, not extremists.
A Real Crisis
The city and country face “wartime conditions,” Ms. Sun said. “There must be no deserters, or they will be nailed to the pillar of historical shame forever.”
A Fine Rollicking Piece
Still sick, but I fear I'll be better soon. After that I'll have no excuses for all the work I'm not getting around to doing.
Thor's Praise
Just yesterday Kirk Douglas died at 103 years old.
They were just as set on the Vikings in his era; and in the era before his. Sir Walter Scott wrote a poem that opens with a celebration of Viking rapine, although what the poem is about is the conversion of the hero to Christianity.
They were just as set on the Vikings in his era; and in the era before his. Sir Walter Scott wrote a poem that opens with a celebration of Viking rapine, although what the poem is about is the conversion of the hero to Christianity.
Woe to the realms where he coasted, for thereThey fought big wars in the last century, and joyous ones in the century before. The Viking thing isn't new; what's new is the loss of faith in what were long thought to be timeless truths.
Was shedding of blood and rending of hair,
Rape of maiden, slaughter of priest,
Gathering of ravens and wolves to the feast!
When he hoisted his standard black
Before him was battle, behind him was wrack!
Learn to code
It's not like the Iowa Dem caucus was trying to solve a difficult problem--but apparently it was beyond the skills of whatever novice they turned the coding problem over to.
Which still doesn't explain why three days later they still haven't managed to finish the calculations by pencil. There's just no explanation for any of this that should lead a voter to conclude he can improve life for Americans by voting for these people. Incompetence? Corruption? Inextricable mix of the two? It's all the same result, and it's what human institutions always get when the guiding principle is "you just have to leave us in power because Reasons."
Which still doesn't explain why three days later they still haven't managed to finish the calculations by pencil. There's just no explanation for any of this that should lead a voter to conclude he can improve life for Americans by voting for these people. Incompetence? Corruption? Inextricable mix of the two? It's all the same result, and it's what human institutions always get when the guiding principle is "you just have to leave us in power because Reasons."
Acquittal
As expected, President Trump was acquitted on both articles of impeachment. Mitt Romney cast the only crossover vote: to convict on abuse of power, but not on obstruction of Congress. That made the votes 48-52 and 47-53.
Down Sick
Got the thing the wife had after two weeks of standing it off. I’m going to lay in bed with beer until I feel better. Good luck to you until then.
Cloudy Days
The jet stream and the Polar Vortex are far to the north this winter; there is neither La Niña nor El Niño. As a result we are getting all our winter weather straight off the Gulf of Mexico, which makes this warm and wet. Nearly every day it rains.
People are sick around here, as well. It's a day of ambition on the grand scale, but locally it's little but sickness and rain.
People are sick around here, as well. It's a day of ambition on the grand scale, but locally it's little but sickness and rain.
To Hear the Lamentations of the Women
Specifically, Ms. Kara Swisher, and one other she cites below.
Who won? Who knows? Which is not exactly how the Democrats want to start off these critical primaries. This looks more like my octogenarian mom when her New York Post app does not load correctly than a political party leaning into the future.With 62% of the votes allegedly now being accurately reported, #MayorCheat is very slightly in the lead (in delegates; Sanders leads the popular vote). So-called "Frontrunner" Biden barely made viability. Warren is in third, not very far above Biden but comfortably viable.
This reminds me of another Democratic tech snafu: the debut of the glitch-laden and over-budget Obamacare website, technically called HealthCare.gov...
There was the hashtag #MayorCheat, alleging links between Pete Buttigieg and the company that built the app for the caucuses, Shadow — Could it have a worse name? No, it could not! — and also its funder, a Democratic digital strategy operation called Acronym.... As the writer Maura Quint noted on Twitter: “Feels like you can ask people to trust the process or you can name your election companies Acronym and Shadow like they’re rival gangs of supervillains in a movie where Spiderman teams up with G.I. Joe to save Manhattan, but you can’t do both.”
"Quality Control"
I'm pretty sure that means "editing."
UPDATE: The unity headquarters reporting room is apparently located in a boiler room, complete with furnace for undesirable results and documentation.
They're not even pretending anymore.
UPDATE: The unity headquarters reporting room is apparently located in a boiler room, complete with furnace for undesirable results and documentation.
They're not even pretending anymore.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)