Trendlist: Althouse

Monday, December 20, 2021

Althouse

Another dull sunrise — photo taken at 7:15 a.m. on the second to the last day before the solistice.
"Baby boxes have a history that goes back to 'foundling wheels'—revolving barrels that were installed in the sides of churches and convents during the Middle Ages..."
"I don't wanna minimize — denigrate — Mike's talent, but I had a money machine rolling."
"Professor Put Clues to a Cash Prize in His Syllabus.... Tucked into the second page of the syllabus was information about a locker number and its combination. Inside was a $50 bill, which went unclaimed."
"A growing body of preliminary research suggests the Covid vaccines used in most of the world offer almost no defense against becoming infected by the highly contagious Omicron variant...."
"I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation. I’ve tried everything humanly possible. I can’t get there. This is a no."
Watch Wisconsin win.
A very dull sunrise.

Another dull sunrise — photo taken at 7:15 a.m. on the second to the last day before the solistice.

Posted: 20 Dec 2021 01:14 AM PST

I knew before I set out that there was 100% cloud cover, so this dullness was no surprise. I centered the lit-up state capitol dome in the frame as a stand-in for the sun.

"Baby boxes have a history that goes back to 'foundling wheels'—revolving barrels that were installed in the sides of churches and convents during the Middle Ages..."

Posted: 19 Dec 2021 02:16 PM PST

"... where people could leave their offspring without being seen. (In the twelfth century, Pope Innocent III mandated that the contraption be installed in Rome, after he became alarmed at the number of dead babies washing up in the Tiber River.) In recent years, they've made a comeback in many countries, notably in Germany, where they are called Babyklappen, or baby hatches... A mother who leaves her infant in the Babyklappe has eight weeks to return for the baby.... In the U.S., the first safe-haven law—also known as the 'Baby Moses' law—was passed in Texas, in 1999, in response to a spate of abandoned infants. By 2008, similar laws had been implemented in all fifty states... 'That's important symbolically for pro-life groups, because they always love to emphasize how similar abortion is to infanticide,' [Mary Ziegler, a legal historian who studies abortion said]. 'Like, if you're horrified by the idea of surrendering a newborn baby, or putting a baby in a box, why are you not horrified by killing a baby in the womb at fifteen weeks?' .... 'This isn't an abortion debate,' [said Monica Kelsey, the founder of Safe Haven Baby Boxes]. 'The women that we deal with on a daily basis have already chosen life for their children.'... Kelsey... grew up in Ohio, raised by adoptive parents who... 'said my birth parents were young and in love, and they had to give me up because they couldn't care for me.'... But at age thirty-seven, married and a mother herself, she managed to track down her biological mother, who revealed [that a]t the age of seventeen, Kelsey's mother had been attacked and violently raped.... Two hours after Kelsey was born, her biological mother and grandmother abandoned her at a hospital.... 'I was actually whisked into this world by violence.'"

From "The Baby-Box Lady of America/With the help of safe-haven laws, which allow parents to anonymously surrender their babies, Monica Kelsey has installed more than ninety baby boxes—mailbox-like receptacles for infants—in five states" (The New Yorker).

"I don't wanna minimize — denigrate — Mike's talent, but I had a money machine rolling."

Posted: 19 Dec 2021 09:14 AM PST

The quote in the headline appears at 17:00. "Mike" is the late Mike Nesmith.

This is a really interesting documentary presentation of The Monkees story. They were so troubled by the line between real and fake. It may be a little hard for people of today even to grasp how truth was at stake. They were real actors, doing a real comedy show, and they really sang. Why the angst?!

ADDED: At 18:05: "And I walked in with a song I really believed in, called 'Sugar, Sugar.'"

"Professor Put Clues to a Cash Prize in His Syllabus.... Tucked into the second page of the syllabus was information about a locker number and its combination. Inside was a $50 bill, which went unclaimed."

Posted: 19 Dec 2021 08:28 AM PST

The NYT reports.

"Free to the first who claims; locker one hundred forty-seven; combination fifteen, twenty-five, thirty-five," read the passage in the syllabus. But when the semester ended on Dec. 8, students went home and the cash was unclaimed.

"My semester-long experiment has come to an end," [Kenyon Wilson, a professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga] wrote on Facebook, adding: "Today I retrieved the unclaimed treasure."...

Tanner Swoyer, a senior studying instrumental music education, said that he felt "pretty dumb, pretty stupid" when he saw the professor's post... Mr. Swoyer immediately texted his classmates, who also felt "bamboozled," mostly because, he said, this was something Professor Wilson would do....

I see no bamboozling here. I've already blogged about the word "bamboozle" — complete with a quote from "The Life of Pi" — here. But, briefly, to "bamboozle" is to trick. There's no trick here. The students didn't lose or risk losing their own money. It was the professor's money, and he put it where anyone could easily take it, if they were sharp enough to see.

Let this be a lesson to everyone: What fine benefits are right there for you to take that you do not see? Jesus said:

[T]heir ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart.... But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear. For verily I say unto you, That many prophets and righteous men have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them.

A footnote:

I was surprised to see the phrase "The jig is up" again (and so soon). The NYT article ends with the professor saying he probably couldn't repeat what he did: "The jig is up... There's no way I can duplicate that."

Just 2 days ago, I blogged about "The jig is up," which appeared in a WaPo headline. I recommended avoiding this phrase because it can be misunderstood.

I mean absolutely nothing against Professor Wilson, whom I defend even against the charge that he's a bamboozler, but if I were editing the NYT, I would have omitted that quote. It's in the "chink in the armor" category. Or "niggardly." It contains a syllable that in other contexts is a racial slur, and it is subject to misreading, and it's not useful enough to need to save.

"A growing body of preliminary research suggests the Covid vaccines used in most of the world offer almost no defense against becoming infected by the highly contagious Omicron variant...."

Posted: 19 Dec 2021 07:34 AM PST

"[O]nly the Pfizer and Moderna shots, when reinforced by a booster, appear to have success at stopping infections, and these vaccines are unavailable in most of the world. The other shots — including those from AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson and vaccines manufactured in China and Russia — do little to nothing to stop the spread of Omicron, early research shows.... The Pfizer and Moderna shots use the new mRNA technology, which has consistently offered the best protection against infection with every variant. All of the other vaccines are based on older methods of triggering an immune response.... 'High vaccination coverage combined with early reports that Omicron does not cause serious illness is leading to a false sense of security in the country.... We have to get people to understand that it doesn't work like that: If you get high transmissibility you're going to have the health system saturated because the number of people getting ill will be higher'..."

From "Most of the World's Vaccines Likely Won't Prevent Infection From Omicron/They do seem to offer significant protection against severe illness, but the consequences of rapidly spreading infection worry many public health experts" (NYT).

"I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation. I’ve tried everything humanly possible. I can’t get there. This is a no."

Posted: 19 Dec 2021 02:20 PM PST

Said Joe Manchin, quoted in "Manchin Pulls Support From Biden's Social Policy Bill, Imperiling Its Passage/'I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation,' Mr. Manchin said on 'Fox News Sunday,' citing concerns about adding to the national debt" (NYT).

For months, Mr. Manchin had huddled privately with Mr. Biden and his top officials in an attempt to secure a compromise. His objections forced the White House to substantially curtail the scope of the package and remove certain programs, including the creation of a clean electricity program and a plan to ban new oil drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.

As early as last week, even as Mr. Biden confirmed that efforts to pass the legislation had stalled, he waxed optimistic, saying that talks with Mr. Manchin would continue and that he believed that "we will bridge our differences and advance the Build Back Better plan."...

"They're just trying to make the adjustment for the time to fit the money or the money to fit the time," Mr. Manchin said. "Not changing our approach, not targeting things we should be doing."

UPDATE: Statement from Press Secretary Jen Psaki:

Senator Manchin's comments this morning on FOX are at odds with his discussions this week with the President, with White House staff, and with his own public utterances.... Senator Manchin pledged repeatedly to negotiate on finalizing that framework "in good faith."... If his comments on FOX and written statement indicate an end to that effort, they represent a sudden and inexplicable reversal in his position, and a breach of his commitments to the President and the Senator's colleagues in the House and Senate....

Watch Wisconsin win.

Posted: 19 Dec 2021 06:41 AM PST