Althouse |
- Sunrise panorama.
- "A plan announced in 2015 to replace Founding Father Alexander Hamilton on the $10 bill was reversed a year later, due in part to the massive success of Broadway musical 'Hamilton.'"
- Did the week-long commemoration of January 6th boost Joe Biden's popularity?
- "Just as an MSNBC anchor is saying, 'We're also watching the Supreme Court. It could be a big day'"/"And just like with the Texas abortion cases, SCOTUS has faked us all out. No more opinions today"/"SCOTUS is definitely trolling us..."
- "And I should have told him, 'No, you're not old.'/And I should have let him go on, smiling, babywide."
- "[Stacy] Abrams hasn’t specified what led her to bypass Biden’s event... Her decision triggered speculation... that she was avoiding the president’s souring approval ratings."
- "You could not invent a better advertisement for the legislative filibuster than what we’re just seeing, a president abandoning rational persuasion for pure, pure demagoguery."
- Goodbye to Ronnie Spector.
- Icy Lake Mendota in the morning and afternoon.
- "British users of a viral internet word puzzle were up in arms this morning after the American spelling of [I'M NOT TELLING] was revealed as an answer...."
- "I’m well aware of the stereotypes of white parents choosing the private-school option when the going gets tough at public schools."
- Trump does a 15-minute interview with NPR.
- "It was either die or do this transplant. I want to live. I know it’s a shot in the dark, but it’s my last choice."
- If Trump is coming back, why not Hillary too? Let's relive 2016 in 2024. Wouldn't that be great?
- At the Black Ice Café... you can talk about whatever you want.
- "From Cotswolds car parks to the golf clubs of Dorset, smiling young women have been approaching wealthy older men on the pretext of charity fundraising, but ultimately walking off with their Rolexes."
- "The Pope has criticised 'cancel culture,' claiming it suffocates freedom of expression, rewrites the past and eliminates 'all sense of identity.'"
- Judged by a wasp — "This tiny individual was judging me."
- "Question: When will we put Dr. Seuss on the twenty?"
- Who wins and who loses if the political divide on Covid breaks down — as it seems to be breaking down because of Omicron?
- Here’s a place for you to talk about whatever you want.
- "I have a lot more in common with liberals in terms of creativity, music and all that stuff — Republicans are always seen as staid and stodgy."
- "Born into a real estate dynasty that ranked with the Trumps, Zeckendorfs and Helmsleys in New York, Mr. Durst had been a deeply troubled outlier of the family since his youth."
- Are any of you trying to watch "Don't Look Up"?
| Posted: 13 Jan 2022 08:31 AM PST  Time: 7:21. |
| Posted: 13 Jan 2022 08:08 AM PST "Instead, the Treasury Department announced that a vignette of suffrage movement leaders would appear on the back of the currency — a redesign that will not enter circulation until 2026. Another effort under the Obama administration to replace Andrew Jackson, the president responsible for the 1830 Indian Removal Act, with abolitionist Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill was shelved by the Trump Administration. After taking office last year, President Biden pledged to revive the plan and 'speed up' the process, but Tubman is still not set to appear on the bill by the end of Biden's first term, or a potential second term, The Washington Post reported. Production for new paper currency faces major holdups, driven by a need for new anti-counterfeiting features and court injunctions calling for bills to include 'meaningful access' for people who are blind or visually impaired. Coins, on the other hand, have seen frequent redesigns...." The "heads" side of the coin still has George Washington (as is legally required), though they've switched to a version of him facing in the other direction — sculpted by a woman. So these new images of women are on the "tails" side. I hope this doesn't lead to any arguments over coin flips. Call "heads" to be safe. |
| Did the week-long commemoration of January 6th boost Joe Biden's popularity? Posted: 13 Jan 2022 07:18 AM PST Multiple polls have measured opinion post-Jan. 6, and the ratings continue to decline. |
| Posted: 13 Jan 2022 07:04 AM PST |
| Posted: 13 Jan 2022 06:40 AM PST "Lather" came up in the "Rock Mix" that Spotify made especially for me today, as I was smiling — babywide? — on my morning run today, the day after my birthday, my 71st birthday, or as I like to put it, the first day of my 72nd year. Lather's friends in the song — who've "stopped being boys" — are 33 and 27. I mean one (the banker) is 33 and the other (the commander of his "very own tank") is 27. They're not each 33 + 27. But I can see that those numbers add up to 60, and I am 11 years old than that. "Lather" is a song facing the confusion of becoming 30ish. Lather himself has just turned 30, and he seems to be clinging to outright babyhood, as the band suggests maybe that's just fine... or good enough for Lather anyway. It's a whole other matter breaking into the decade that begins with a 7, which I like to come out and say is the 8th decade of life. Speak plainly! And look for what is good. Some people — the glass-half-empty folks — say that as you get older, with more of your days behind you, each day is a smaller percentage of the total time you have lived, and thus, the days seem insubstantial and short. But the other way to see it is that is that each day now is a bigger percentage of the time you have left. Today might be 1% of the rest of your life. It might be 100%! Are you giving today what it deserves? It is so much. As I listened to the old rock songs that Spotify had strung together for me, I visualized myself — I was running through the woods — looking over at the me who existed at the time I first heard a particular song — it was "Too Many People" — and I waved at myself in the 70s and sent the message that everything will be fine when you are in your 70s. You'll be able to run — in the woods! — and you'll have this music in your ears because a computer — an "electronic brain," as you call it — will know you like it and will pump it directly into your head. And you won't care so much about your birthday, because 2 days after your birthday will be something called your "bloggiversary." There will be something you do for the first time on January 14, 2004, and you will proceed to do it every single day for 18 years and counting.... Althouse is productive, you know.... |
| Posted: 13 Jan 2022 04:55 AM PST "But that narrative hasn't reflected her strategy. She has closely aligned herself with Biden, campaigned to be his running-mate and launched her bid [for governor] with a promise to back the president's agenda.... While Georgia Democrats typically celebrate a Democratic president's visit to the state, Biden's trip was met with complaints from activists and party officials. Some grumbled about the lack of coordination with local Democratic leaders and the timing of an event scheduled a day after Georgia played in the college football championship game in Indianapolis. Others questioned why Biden didn't hold a fundraiser for Georgia candidates during his trip and lamented that Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris made the trip at all given that the Democratic U.S. senators who needed to be convinced to relax filibuster rules were in Washington." From "Abrams camp rejects 'false rumors' about her no-show at Biden event" (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution). Here's the transcript of the event, with the text of the speeches given by Biden and Harris. Did anyone even mention the glorious victory of Georgia's football team the day before? A tremendously uplifting event had occurred. It wasn't political. It was special to Georgia. But the Washingtonians descended upon the state with dramatic, racialized negativity. They insisted on setting the tone, their tone, and it wasn't jubilation. And not one speaker mentioned football. How could they? It would spoil their message of joylessness. It would offer discordant evidence that Americans can come together, and life isn't all about politics. |
| Posted: 13 Jan 2022 04:27 AM PST "A president shouting that 52 senators and millions of Americans are racist unless he gets whatever he wants is proving exactly why the framers built the Senate to check his power." Said Mitch McConnell, quoted in "McConnell rips Biden's voting rights speech as 'profoundly unpresidential'" (NY Post). I didn't watch Biden's speech — I can read the transcript — but I did overhear it, and I said out loud, What is he yelling about? Why is he scolding us? He's using a ridiculous "tough guy" voice. You can criticize me for not attending to the substance, but he wasn't trying to use substance. He was using emotive sound effects. It was like a Trump rally — but no. A Trump rally would have humor and fun. And I don't think Trump ever relied on the argument that you're a racist if you don't agree with him. The anti-Trump rejoinder: Trump never called his opponents racists, because his between-the-lines message was always come all you racists and follow me. |
| Posted: 12 Jan 2022 04:02 PM PST ADDED: "Ronnie Spector, Ronettes Singer and Ultimate Girl-Group Icon, Dead at 78/'Her joyful sound, playful nature, and magical presence will live on in all who knew, heard, or saw her,' Spector's family said of the 'Be My Baby' and 'Walking in the Rain' vocalist" (Rolling Stone).
"As I said many times while he was alive, he was a brilliant producer, but a lousy husband," [Ronnie Spector] said shortly after [Phil Spector] died last year. "Unfortunately, Phil was not able to live and function outside of the recording studio. Darkness set in, many lives were damaged. I still smile whenever I hear the music we made together, and always will. The music will be forever." |
| Icy Lake Mendota in the morning and afternoon. Posted: 12 Jan 2022 03:54 PM PST It finally warmed up enough to do the sunrise run...  ... about 30° at 7:27 when I took that photograph. Later, we drove out to a place in Madison that I'd never even noticed before, Governor's Island:  This is land that had belonged to a governor in the 19th century, that became the Wisconsin Hospital for the Insane, later called Mendota Mental Health Institute. It's where Ed Gein lived out his last years. We enjoyed our sojourn around the beautifully scenic location. It was about 40° at 3:20, and we walked out onto the Lake Mendota ice... just a little way...  Watch out, if you go. There are, I hear, some "puddles." I liked the view from the bluff...  Notice how the ice piles up in frozen "waves" along the shore. We walked the entire loop of the small island, then drove home around to our side of the lake, where we got a glimpse of the sunset...  ... as we entered the car wash:   |
| Posted: 12 Jan 2022 07:03 AM PST "There was yet more discord when Americans started referring to English as 'British English.' The anger was perhaps all the more intense because the designer of the game is British... Americans omit the u in words such as colour, honour, humour, labour, neighbour and splendour.... Instead of our –re spellings, Americans go to the theater, eat more fiber and wield a saber.... Double consonants are very confusing between the two conventions. Americans do not double consonants in some past participles (eg we are dishevelled, but they are disheveled). However, they do so in some infinitices (eg to appal is English, but it is to appall in the US).... Noah Webster, the American lexicographer, sometimes dropped the silent e which came from French 'loan words.' This could also involve dropping an extra consonant. For instance, grille became grill, annexe became annex, gramme became gram and tonne became ton... A number of 'simplifications' in American English have appeared in common usage in the UK. We may still cash cheques rather than checks but we don't have 'get out of gaol free' cards, while some have been known to plow through the snow and others complain of a chilly draft...." From "Wordle puzzle provokes war of words with American spelling." That's at a news site that calls itself "The Times" that I'm more aware than usual would probably not appreciate my calling it "The London Times." "Infinitices" — Is that a word or a typo? It's not in the OED, and they do seem to be trying to say "infinitives." It took me half a minute to understand what was meant "some have been known to plow through the snow and others complain of a chilly draft." It means that the traditional British spelling would be "plough" and "draught." |
| Posted: 12 Jan 2022 06:47 AM PST "I told myself that prioritizing being a 'good leftist' at the expense of my son's well-being wasn't good parenting, but as a red-diaper baby myself, the white guilt dies hard... Sending my kid to private school was accompanied by a lot of angst.... The pandemic, and the school-reopening debate in particular, has thrown me into an ideological mid-life crisis, questioning all my prior political assumptions. I'm still attempting to hold onto the progressive label while calling out the policies I see as antithetical to it, but the longer fellow progressives support new school closures and other policies that restrict kids' lives in order to allay the anxieties of adults, and have been shown to cause far more harm than benefit, the more alienated I feel." From "How School Closures Made Me Question My Progressive Politics/I've never felt more alienated from the liberal Democratic circles I usually call home" by Rebecca Bodenheimer (Politico). |
| Trump does a 15-minute interview with NPR. Posted: 12 Jan 2022 11:17 AM PST Full text here. It begins on the subject of covid: The vaccines, I recommend taking them, but I think that has to be an individual choice. I mean, it's got to be individual, but I recommend taking them. Many people recommend them. And if some people don't want, they shouldn't have to take them. They can't be mandated, as the expression goes. And I think that's very important. Personally, I feel very comfortable having taken them. I've had absolutely no reverberation.... But then it's all about the 2020 election results, with Trump sticking to his attack on the election and the interviewer, Steve Inskeep, pressuring him until Trump cuts it off. A few highlights:
Let me ask you this question. How come Biden couldn't attract 20 people for a crowd? How come when he went to speak in different locations, nobody came to watch, but all of a sudden he got 80 million votes? Nobody believes that, Steve. Nobody believes that. |
| Posted: 12 Jan 2022 04:35 AM PST Said the man with the pig's heart, quoted in "In a First, Man Receives a Heart From a Genetically Altered Pig/The breakthrough may lead one day to new supplies of animal organs for transplant into human patients" (NYT). I wonder why they finally got around to doing this. I've heard about it for decades. The doctor said: "It creates the pulse, it creates the pressure, it is his heart. It's working and it looks normal. We are thrilled, but we don't know what tomorrow will bring us. This has never been done before.... The anatomy was a little squirrelly, and we had a few moments of 'uh-oh' and had to do some clever plastic surgery to make everything fit." The pig anatomy was squirrelly. |
| If Trump is coming back, why not Hillary too? Let's relive 2016 in 2024. Wouldn't that be great? Posted: 12 Jan 2022 03:27 AM PST I'm lured into this absurd clickbait at The Wall Street Journal: "Hillary Clinton's 2024 Election Comeback/Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have become unpopular. It may be time for a change candidate" by Douglas E. Schoen and Andrew Stein. A perfect storm in the Democratic Party is making a once-unfathomable scenario plausible: a political comeback for Hillary Clinton in 2024. So the point is, the Democrats somehow have no one. "Viable" means capable of living. The party is so bereft of life that it might dig up Hillary and run her again. That said, I remember "The New Nixon," the 1968 Nixon. She's in the same position: Lost an election, sat out the next election, and then came back and won/could win. And Nixon always seemed unappealing. The authors of the WSJ piece never mention Nixon. Because he is so unappealing. But he's the accurate comparison if you want to argue it can be done, which they do.
Did she mean to say that Biden is not sane, not sober, no stable, and not productive?
It's good to be reminded of her similarity to Trump: She never accepted the results of the election.
"Best" = they've got nothing better. |
| At the Black Ice Café... you can talk about whatever you want. Posted: 11 Jan 2022 05:29 PM PST It finally warmed up enough that I could take an afternoon walk. I hadn't seen the lake in 7 days, and those very cold days had transformed the lake:  There's some beautiful glassy-clear ice on the lake. Look out there:  2 ice skaters with 2 dogs:  Higher up, the prairie and the sunset:  |
| Posted: 11 Jan 2022 08:31 AM PST "In many cases they offer a hug or a kiss of gratitude after a petition has been signed, then depart, having removed their victim's expensive watch from his wrist. The Times can reveal that the women — none of whom has been traced — struck nearly 70 times last year across the home counties and the southwest." The London Times reports. Watch out for smiling young women who offer hugs and kisses. |
| Posted: 11 Jan 2022 08:35 AM PST "In a strongly worded speech yesterday to diplomats gathered at the Vatican, the Pope said 'a kind of one-track thinking is taking shape, one constrained to deny history or, worse yet, to rewrite it.'... The Pope said the trend was influencing diplomacy, creating 'a mindset that rejects the natural foundations of humanity and the cultural roots that constitute the identity of many peoples.' The result, he said, was 'a form of ideological colonisation, one that leaves no room for freedom of expression and is now taking the form of the "cancel culture" invading many circles and public institutions.'... 'Under the guise of defending diversity, it ends up cancelling all sense of identity, with the risk of silencing positions that defend a respectful and balanced understanding of various sensibilities.'" From "Cancel culture is rewriting the past, warns Pope Francis" (London Times). The Pope's words are translated from the Italian, but he said "cancel culture" in English. Doesn't the Pope have to oppose cancel culture? Whether he says so outright or not, he must defend the Catholic Church, and the Catholic Church is a very conspicuous target of the culture. Here's the full text of the speech. ADDED: I'd trust the Pope when he identifies "ideological colonization." It takes one to know one! |
| Judged by a wasp — "This tiny individual was judging me." Posted: 11 Jan 2022 06:42 AM PST I'm reading Jordi Casamitjana interview: I'm a vegan thanks to Franco and wasps/An 'ethical vegan' fired by a charity has changed the law for his fellow animal lovers. His campaign began with a nest of insects" (London Times): Something life-changing happened while Jordi Casamitjana was working on his PhD on the social behaviour of wasps. He was observing a nest when one of the insects turned and looked straight at him. "My heart was thumping," he recalls. "This tiny individual was judging me. And it decided 'you're fine' and didn't raise the alarm [to the rest of the nest]." He vowed that day to devote his life to helping animals....
That's from 2 years ago. I'm reading it this morning because it came up in the sidebar as I was reading something new: "Women who eat little meat and dairy put their health at risk, says scientist." Key message there: If you're vegan, you need to take special care to get enough iron, magnesium, iodine, calcium, and zinc. Casamitjana's rule for living: "Everything I do is based on two things: minimising the damage I'm doing to others and maximising the help to those who need it the most. That's it: that's my entire life." |
| "Question: When will we put Dr. Seuss on the twenty?" Posted: 11 Jan 2022 06:03 AM PST That's a question I wrote in this page of the sketchbook I drew when I was in Paris. (It was some time in the 1990s. I forget when. I blogged this page in 2004, the first year of this blog, after St. Exupéry's plane was found in the Mediterranean Sea, 60 years after he crashed and died.)  I loved that France had put an artist on its money, and I felt a little sad that we Americans don't put our artists first. So I must feel elated that we've done it at last. We've put an artist on our money:  I got my wish, so I'm just going to be happy about an artist on the money, not argue about the particular artist chosen. When I wrote in my sketchbook, I picked the name Dr. Seuss not only because he wrote accessible words and drew charming drawings, which is what St. Exupéry did. I picked it because I thought virtually all Americans could get behind the choice of Dr. Seuss. We all know him and have enjoyed his work. Who can't like him? But 18 years have passed, and... is Dr. Seuss cancelled? He's somewhere on the road to cancellation. So I couldn't get my precise wish. When you wish upon a Star-Bellied Sneetch/Makes no difference who you reach/Something like your heart desires/Will come to you.... So I got my wish imprecisely. I got Maya Angelou! *** Like a songbird, her legs are invisible as she flies, arms outstretched/Darting into the slots of vending machines/Across America. |
| Posted: 11 Jan 2022 05:21 AM PST I'm reading "Why More Americans Are Saying They're 'Vaxxed and Done'/COVID has always divided Americans. The Omicron wave is even dividing the vaccinated" (The Atlantic). Some 2022 Democrats are sounding like 2020 Republicans. In spring 2020, many Republicans, including President Donald Trump, insisted that COVID was hardly worse than the flu; that its fatality risk was comparable to an everyday activity, like driving in a car; and that an obsessive focus on cases wouldn't give an accurate picture of what was going on in the pandemic. That's not exactly how I remember it (and I watched Trump's Covid show every day). I accept the use of "comparable" but not "hardly worse." But those who loathed Trump agonized over every comparison to the flu because it seemed he wasn't taking things seriously enough. I think he was trying to steel us for the fight and avert panic, but anti-Trump people were already in a panic over Trump and — in that election year — they wanted Trump to fail. So I see why people split politically over something that wasn't inherently political.
You can see right there that the Atlantic writer — Derek Thompson — is going to say that the Democrats have changed their beliefs because the facts have changed. But the political landscape also has changed: The Democrats are in power, they're in charge of the long hard fight, and they're the ones who stand to lose in elections coming up later in the year. That's reason to act like we'll be fine, we can make it. Keep calm and tough it out. The messiness of Omicron data—record-high cases! but much milder illness!—has deepened our COVID Rashomon, in which different communities are telling themselves different stories about what's going on, and coming to different conclusions about how to lead their lives. That's true even within populations that, a year ago, were united in their desire to take the pandemic seriously and were outraged by those who refused to do so.... The article-writer doesn't go anywhere with the political analysis he sets up. He doesn't even see the political question I put in my post title, which I wrote when I was a quarter of the way through his piece. So let me try to answer my own question. Here's why the breakdown of the political divide could help Democrats. If fighting Omicron is a losing game, the perception that it's not a fight anymore keeps the Democrats, who are in charge, from looking like losers. If Omicron is accepted — relatively benign, unstoppably fast-moving — then there's less expectation that the government will take forcible actions and displace private decision-making. You might think, that's what Democrats do — take forcible actions and displace private decision-making — that's their brand. But they could take forcible actions and displace private decision-making about something other than Covid, something where their failures won't rack up so quickly and obviously. Enough about politicians. What about ordinary people? What should you do about Omicron and should it have a damned thing to do with politics? Should you keep making demands of other people, or should you look to your own health and the health of your family? If the answer to that question is political — and I'm afraid it is! — then it's time for me to type the last word of this post and hit publish. |
| Here’s a place for you to talk about whatever you want. Posted: 10 Jan 2022 05:26 PM PST And again, no photograph. It was another super-cold day here in The North. |
| Posted: 10 Jan 2022 01:07 PM PST Said Greg Gutfeld — who likes punk rock and metal — quoted in "Greg Gutfeld has risen to the top at Fox News — and that's no joke" (WaPo). Also from the article (and this has nothing to do with Gutfeld's purported commonality with liberals): The rare panelist inclined to regularly push back against Gutfeld is Tyrus, a 6-foot-8-inch, 365-pound Republican actor and professional wrestler, who towers over the 5-foot-4-inch host. "He's never asked me to share his vision," Tyrus says in an interview. Tyrus, who is African American, is a central figure in the show's relentless lampooning of woke culture. He appears in regular skits as "The Angry Black Male" to mock activists who he and Gutfeld believe overuse and misuse assertions of racial inequities. |
| Posted: 10 Jan 2022 12:02 PM PST "He fought constantly with his younger brother Douglas, who went on to head the family empire. When Robert Durst tried joining the button-down real estate world, he failed miserably. He was socially awkward, muttered to himself, belched noisily in public and urinated in office wastebaskets. In other settings, he could be smooth, urbane and enormously generous. He gave thousands of dollars to friends, attended the ballet and partied at Studio 54 and other Manhattan hot spots. A master of disguises and aliases, he maintained a stash of wigs and masks and assumed false identities.... In the final episode of the six-part HBO series, he is heard muttering to himself during a bathroom break, apparently unaware that a microphone attached to his clothing is still live: 'What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.'" From "Robert Durst, heir to New York real estate fortune and convicted murderer, dies at 78" (WaPo). |
| Are any of you trying to watch "Don't Look Up"? Posted: 10 Jan 2022 11:01 AM PST I'm trying to watch it, but what I've been doing is watching maybe 20 or 30 minutes and stopping, then starting again on another day. I think I've had 4 bites of it on a sequence of days, but I'm still far from the end. I'm interested, but I get annoyed. I think it's badly written and badly directed. The timing is wrong. I don't know. I'm fascinated by the character who talks like Jordan Peterson — Mark Rylance as Peter Isherwell. I think Jennifer Lawrence is good as the "We're all gonna die!" girl. Leonardo DiCaprio's character is interesting enough, and Meryl Streep is reasonably funny as the ditzy President. Here's some of what Mark Rylance does:UPDATE: I finally got to the end. The end was handled well. Spoiler alert: The meaning of life is to sit down to dinner with your family, say grace, and show the love. |
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