Trendlist: Althouse

Sunday, November 14, 2021

Althouse

"In the 1860s, New England was in the grip of a 'pear mania,' an enthusiasm for amateur horticulture which irked Henry David Thoreau, who felt pears were..."
"My life is completely different now. I can’t imagine myself living 100 percent back in Tokyo anymore. I love how I’m surrounded by nature here, and I feel healthier and emotionally full."
"Overcharging may please the public, but it can demolish a case. While jurors can convict on 'lesser included' offenses..."
"The Post-ABC poll finds that, if elections were held today, 46 percent of adults overall would back the Republican candidate for Congress and 43 percent would support the Democratic candidate."
"Spears is still in a profoundly difficult position, despite, and perhaps because of, her new control of her life."
This NYT headline displays an unabashed belief that censorship is desirable and expected, as if the tradition of freedom of speech has evaporated.
Sunrise, 6:55.

"In the 1860s, New England was in the grip of a 'pear mania,' an enthusiasm for amateur horticulture which irked Henry David Thoreau, who felt pears were..."

Posted: 14 Nov 2021 04:38 PM PST

"... a finicky and 'aristocratic' fruit compared to the apples he loved. 'The hired man gathers the apples and barrels them. The proprietor plucks the pears at odd hours for a pastime, and his daughter wraps them each in its paper,' he wrote. 'Judges & ex-judges & honorables are connoisseurs of pears & discourse of them at length between sessions.'… In his 1862 essay 'Wild Apples,' Thoreau describes an apple-picking walk through the Massachusetts countryside in November as a full sensory experience, in which the fruit can only be appreciated as part of the environment that produced it—as a way to taste late autumn. 'These apples have hung in the wind and frost and rain till they have absorbed the qualities of the weather or season, and thus are highly seasoned, and they pierce and sting and permeate us with their spirit. They must be eaten in season, accordingly,—that is, out-of-doors.' Wild apples, randomly cross-pollinated by bees, have a wide range of flavors, sometimes even when grown from the same tree, and a love for them requires a palate that can tolerate the occasionally sour, gnarled, irregular, intense. This is a kind of novelty that has been eradicated in our quest for endless choice. Thoreau himself predicted that 'The era of the Wild Apple will soon be past… I fear that he who walks over these fields a century hence will not know the pleasure of knocking off wild apples. Ah, poor man, there are many pleasures which he will not know!'"

From "Fruits of Empire/The plant explorers of the USDA succeeded in bringing the world's fruits to American supermarkets. But at what human, ecological, and gustatory cost?" by Willa Glickman (NY Review of Books).

(The illustration, from the NYRB article, is of a Belle Angevine pear from Fleury-sous-Meudon, Île-de-France, France, 1900.)

"My life is completely different now. I can’t imagine myself living 100 percent back in Tokyo anymore. I love how I’m surrounded by nature here, and I feel healthier and emotionally full."

Posted: 14 Nov 2021 07:12 AM PST

Said Kana Hashimoto, 25, quoted in "Goodbye, city life. Green acres in Japan beckon as pandemic shifts priorities" (WaPo).

In April, she moved to Minami-Aso, a village of about 11,000 people in southern Japan, and now balances many jobs she loves: farming, helping distribute local ingredients to nearby restaurants, working at a miso soup shop and a hot-spring spa....

[Y]oung workers are seeking alternatives to Tokyo's corporate grind, marked by long hours, cramped subway commutes, meetings with bosses over after-work drinks and strict corporate hierarchies. About one-third of the people in their 20s and 30s living in greater Tokyo said they had taken steps in the past six months to move to rural Japan, according to [a] survey. Among 20-somethings alone, 44.9 percent said they were interested in moving to rural Japan....

ADDED: Here's the top-rated comment at WaPo, from ZanHax:

Stories like this are so inspirational to me. In America, however, I don't think it would be so easy for all people. I would love the opportunity to move to a rural community and work the land. The reality, for many Black and minority people, is that policies and rural communities themselves, may not be supportive, safe and welcoming to people like me. There are communities here that I fear driving through when traveling. I think it is simpler to do something like this when a society is more homogeneous. I do wish these young people success, because this grind? It isn't all life is about.

Rural Americans "may not be supportive, safe and welcoming." You "fear driving" when you pass through their territory. But do you know any of these people or are you just prejudiced against them? Where did you learn that prejudice? In the city? And here you are wishing for a more homogeneous society. This is a prime example of how much racism is woven into anti-racism.

"Overcharging may please the public, but it can demolish a case. While jurors can convict on 'lesser included' offenses..."

Posted: 14 Nov 2021 06:37 AM PST

"... the credibility of the prosecution is established by the lead charge. Jurors tend to start at the top and work their way down on the charges. If the first-degree charge is wildly out of reach, they are more likely to doubt the lesser charges, too. Even with some lesser included offenses, it will be hard for prosecutors in the Rittenhouse case to make this cat walk backward. They promised the jury that it would see a vigilante rampaging in utter disregard of human life. Instead, the jury saw a much more confusing, chaotic scene in which Rittenhouse was threatened with a gun, hit repeatedly and chased down a street."

Writes Jonathan Turley in "Rittenhouse trial: Perils of weighing public opinion over evidence" (The Hill).

Is "make this cat walk backward" an idiomatic expression? Google returns only 4 results on this search, one of which is the article I've quoted above. The other 3 — 1, 2, 3 — are all from July 2014, and they are all reports of a quote — on the topic of whether members of Congress can sue the President for violating separation of powers — that came from Jonathan Turley.

"Make this cat walk backward" seems related to the expression that it's hard/impossible to "herd cats." I guess it's hard to make a cat do anything, so make up your own cat expression and try — like Jonathan Turley — to get your idea to go viral.

What can the prosecution do to make the metaphorical cat walk backward? Find a metaphorical Roomba:

ADDED: As many commenters here are saying, you will find non-Turley examples of the phrase "walk the cat back." To walk back isn't the same as to walk backward. When you go out for a walk, in the end, you walk back home. That doesn't mean backward!

Here are the Everly Brothers, and I assure you that they are not imploring the woman to walk backwards, just to walk — in a frontward-facing position — back to them:

Here's a Phrase Finder piece on "Walk the cat back." It begins with a usage by Maureen Dowd (in 2010) that seems to be a misunderstanding of the phrase "walk back the cat." If you think there's no significant difference between those 2 phrases, read that piece. "Walking Back the Cat" was the title of a 1997 spy thriller by Robert Littell who explained it as an expression used by spies to mean "attempting to retrace a process to its origin, when that process had been tentative and indirect in the first place."

"The Post-ABC poll finds that, if elections were held today, 46 percent of adults overall would back the Republican candidate for Congress and 43 percent would support the Democratic candidate."

Posted: 14 Nov 2021 04:06 AM PST

"Among registered voters, the GOP advantage goes to 51 percent vs. 41 percent for Democrats, a historically strong result for Republicans on this measure.... [Biden's] overall approval rating now stands at 41 percent, with 53 percent saying they disapprove.... Biden's overall approval rating is down from 50 percent in June and 44 percent in September, although his current standing is not statistically different from two months ago. Biden's popularity also has slumped among his own base. In June, 94 percent of Democrats approved of the way he was handling his job compared with 3 percent who disapproved. Today, 80 percent of Democrats are positive and 16 percent are negative. Barely 4 in 10 Democrats strongly approve of Biden today, down from about 7 in 10 who did so in June. Biden's approval rating on the economy has also tumbled and now stands at 39 percent positive and 55 percent negative.... Today, just over one-third of Americans say Biden has accomplished a great deal or a good amount during his time in office, with more than 6 in 10 saying he has accomplished 'not much' or 'little or nothing.'... Still, that means nearly one-third of Democrats say Biden has not accomplished much or anything during his first 10 months...."

From "Biden approval hits new low as economic discontent rises, Post-ABC poll finds" (WaPo).

"Spears is still in a profoundly difficult position, despite, and perhaps because of, her new control of her life."

Posted: 14 Nov 2021 03:55 AM PST

"If Spears acts in any way that could be construed as irresponsible, it could be taken, in legal battles to come, as proof that she can't handle her own life. In August, police records show, she placed three calls to police that she subsequently cancelled, and police were also dispatched to her home after she was accused of damaging a housekeeper's phone. (The matter was referred to the district attorney's office, which did not pursue charges.) In mid-October, Spears wrote on Instagram, 'I'll just be honest and say I've waited so long to be free from the situation I'm in . . . and now that it's here I'm scared to do anything because I'm afraid I'll make a mistake !!!' She had just regained the freedom to drive, for the first time in thirteen years, and the paparazzi were chasing her, 'like they want me to do something crazy.'"

"How Britney Spears Got Free, and What Comes Next/Spears fought for years to end the conservatorship she was under, and finally won. But the legal battles aren't over" by Ronan Farrow and Jia Tolentino.

This NYT headline displays an unabashed belief that censorship is desirable and expected, as if the tradition of freedom of speech has evaporated.

Posted: 14 Nov 2021 03:50 AM PST

With dismay, I am reading "On Podcasts and Radio, Misleading Covid-19 Talk Goes Unchecked/False statements about vaccines have spread on the 'Wild West' of media, even as some hosts die of virus complications."

Talk goes unchecked!

Freedom of speech is an artifact of the "Wild West," not the foundation of our republic!

Well, the New York Times is free to print such things, misleading though they are. The NYT is trying to induce private companies to undertake censorship.

[One] podcast is available through iHeart Media... Spotify and Apple are other major companies that provide significant audio platforms for hosts who have shared similar views with their listeners about Covid-19 and vaccination efforts, or have had guests on their shows who promoted such notions.

"There's really no curb on it," said Jason Loviglio, an associate professor of media and communication studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. "There's no real mechanism to push back, other than advertisers boycotting and corporate executives saying we need a culture change."...

That would be a culture change in favor of censorship, and the NYT is doing what it can to instigate demand for that change.

"People develop really close relationships with podcasts," said Evelyn Douek, a senior research fellow at Columbia University's Knight First Amendment Institute. "It's a parasocial medium. There's something about voice that humans really relate to."

There's something about voice that humans really relate to. Yes, the spoken word feels more like a real relationship than the written word, but that makes it more dangerous, it seems. More "parasocial."

I know I like to stick with the written word. It feels more rational. It's easier to pull apart and critique, at least as long as the private company known as Google allows me to continue — continue my parasocial life — and doesn't virtual-murder me.

Buck Sexton, the host of a program syndicated by Premiere Networks, an iHeart subsidiary, recently floated the theory that mass Covid-19 vaccinations could speed the virus's mutation into more dangerous strains. He made this suggestion while appearing on another Premiere Networks program, "The Jesse Kelly Show."

The theory...

The theory that the NYT is now spreading!

... appears to have its roots in a 2015 paper about vaccines for a chicken ailment called Marek's disease. Its author, Andrew Read, a professor of biology and entomology at Penn State University, has said his research has been "misinterpreted" by anti-vaccine activists. He added that Covid-19 vaccines have been found to reduce transmissions substantially, whereas chickens inoculated with the Marek's disease vaccine were still able to transmit the disease. Mr. Sexton did not reply to a request for comment.

Ah. The NYT spread the theory, and it countered the theory with more speech. That's the classic remedy for bad speech in a system of freedom of speech.

I still have some questions. We're clearly being told that we can still spread the disease after we are vaccinated. That's why we're still wearing masks and taking other precautions. So how are we different from Read's chickens? They were "still able to transmit the disease," but so are we (we, the vaccinated).

I read what's at that link, and all I see is Read objecting to "the implication that it's bound to make things worse and the implication that the only solution is to stop the vaccination." But isn't that a misreading by Mr. Read? Who said "it's bound to make things worse"? Anyone? He's just seeing an "implication."

But his point is that the vaccine is the best policy: "The solution to [the disease] all came through vaccines and every chicken in the industry has been better off for being vaccinated than being not vaccinated." I question whether chickens in the industry are better off, but he means to say we, the people, are better off for what we did to the chickens.

ADDED: Proofreading and reaching that last line, the thought popped into my head: Maybe God is a chicken! And you know, it seems that any wild thing you can think is already on the internet. Speech is still that free!

I googled and lo and behold:

1. "Is God a Chicken?!" appears at the website of a Presbyterian Church in San Francisco. It's a discussion of Luke 13:31-35, in which Jesus identifies with a chicken: "how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing." If Jesus is a chicken, isn't his Father a chicken? (I know, Jesus used simile, not metaphor. He said he felt like a chicken (a female chicken, by the way).)

2. "What If God Is Actually A Chicken?" is a story by Stucky that begins: "When Yankel Morgenstern died and went to heaven, he was surprised to find that God was a large chicken. The chicken was about 30 feet tall and spoke perfect English. He stood before a glimmering, eternal coop made of chicken wire of shimmering gold. And behold, inside, a nest of diamonds. 'No freaking way,' said Morgenstern."

Sunrise, 6:55.

Posted: 13 Nov 2021 05:25 PM PST