2015 archive
“Not Our Fight” 0
Thom explains why Frankenstein must pursue his own monster.
Bruisin’ for a Cruzin’ 0
Steven M. notes that Ted Cruz doesn’t seem to be doing so well in the polls and tries figure out why, as he says, Cruz is “in Sarah Palin territory these days.”
Drive Carefully 0
Hot-dogging it on the highways leads to no good.
Along the Way the Signs Would Say . . . . 0
In his Roadshow column, the San Jose Mercury-News’s Gary Richards remembers Burma Shave signs.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Do not allow politeness to take a back seat to anything.
. . . Paulson was shot Jan. 31 when his daughter, who wasn’t in a child restraint seat, pulled the loaded .40 caliber Smith & Wesson handgun from the pocket of her dad’s overalls, according to a probable cause affidavit, prosecutors said. It went off and hit Paulson in his upper right arm.
Mauling a Mall 0
I used to visit Granite Run Mall from time to time. It was a bit out of our normal stamping grounds, but it was not a bad mall, though it seems to be quite out of fashion these days.
The best way to turn around the struggling mall, according to its owners, is to demolish it.
What was once a classic suburban mall will be reborn as something more classically urban.
Outdoor courtyards will replace the traditional mall structure as it becomes a town center with retail stores, restaurants, and luxury apartments.
There is no town for it to be a center of. There is just an intersection in the suburbs.
We have one of those faux “town centers” created at an intersection right here in Virginia Beach. It is sterile wasteland of cookie-cutter chain restaurants, over-priced ersatz boutiques, and sky-high-costing condos and apartments with all the gritty urban flavor of, well, a suburban shopping mall.
To have a “downtown,” you must first have a town that knows how to get down.
“Town Centers” are “developed.” Downtowns are.
Afterthought:
You can bet that the developers will make out okay. They’ll be long gone when the vacuous emptiness of their effort becomes apparent.
QOTD 0
Mark Twain, from Following the Equator:
To speak plainly, we despise all reverences and objects of reverence which are outside the pale of our own list of sacred things. And yet, with strange inconsistency, we are shocked when other people despise and defile the things which are holy to us.
None Dare Call It Terrorism 0
An article in the Tampa Bay Times reflects on the legacy of Judge Lynch.
These episodes of horrific, communitywide violence have been erased from civic memory in lynching-belt states like Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, Florida and Mississippi.
The article goes on to discuss the efforts of the Equal Justice Initiative to ensure that the memory of those deeds are not obliterated, however much preserving them may discomfit some Southern white folks who long for the Good Old Days, but will not mention just what it was that makes them think those old days were so good.
Unlike another much-derided New York Times story, which neglected to mention just who did the lynching, the Tampa Bay Times article* does not flinch from identifying the culprits.
Give it a read, then follow the link to the Equal Justice Initiative and read the report or download the Executive Summary (PDF).
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*In fairness to the NYT, I think the TBT article may have also appeared there. The TBT does not credit its origin.
Plus Ca Change 0
Leonard Pitts, Jr., places Alabama Supreme Court Judge Roy Moore’s recent invocation of nullification in the face of gay marriage into context. A nugget (please read the rest):
That’s what necessitated the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Freedom Rides of 1961. It’s why federal troops had to march into Little Rock in 1957. For that matter, it’s why they had to march into Richmond in 1865. The demagogues always use the same justification, always say that in denying it the right to discriminate as it sees fit, the federal government steps on the South’s “traditions.”
(snip)
Of course, “tradition” is just a smokescreen word, like “values,” “heritage,” “faith” and all the other pretty terminology opponents of marriage equality use to justify their increasingly untenable position. . . . It is, and ever has been, only about a single ugly word: bigotry. . . .
One more time, when you hear someone invoke “states’ rights,” ask, “States’ rights to do just what, precisely.”
Dollars to doughnuts you don’t get a precise answer.
Facebook Frolics 0
The resident curmudgeon at my local rag gets one right. When her time comes, she doesn’t want to be “curated” on the Zuckerborg.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Another child is given the opportunity to exercise politeness.
Gomez tells the Fresno Bee that the girls’ father was getting ready for work and had removed the magazine on his handgun before leaving it on a bed while he got ready for work.
He says the 10-year-old grabbed the gun and discharged a bullet left in the chamber hitting the younger girl.
In related news of the polite, gun nut claims that being required to unload his gun near schools infringes on his right to be polite.
Afterthought:
I suspect my two or three regular readers find these report on the courteous to be tiresome.
I find the ammosexual carnage tiresome.
Know Them by the Company They Keep 0
Joe Conason contemplates the Republican Party’s incoming House whip, Steve Scalise, fellow traveler of white supremacists.
Follow the link for Conason’s thoughts on the matter.
My thoughts are quite simple. Richard Nixon set out to capture the bigot vote with his odious Southern Strategy. The bigot vote now has captured the Republican Party.
Via Progressive Populist.
If You Liked the Old Games . . . . 0
Screenshot of Fargoal Game in Rogue Class Linux
Recently, though, I stumbled over Rogue Class Linux, which describes itself thus:
Rogue Class is a toy Linux distribution for playing games and reading books. RCL favors turn-based games, such as puzzles and rogue-like games.
What interested me, a long-time Sherlockian, was the reference to the Sherlock Holmes gamebook, Murder at the Diogenes Club, one of the games in Rogue Class Linux.
Rogue Class Linux in Virtual Box on Slackware –Current. Click for a larger image.
Look below the fold for some observations and screenshots.
Clickbait 0
Oh, the horror.
While news organizations have always dealt with unverified information, practices at some websites may accelerate the dissemination of fake news, said the report, “Lies, Damn Lies and Viral Content.”
“Many news sites apply little or no basic verification to the claims they pass on. Instead, they rely on linking-out to other media reports, which themselves often only cite other media reports as well,” the study concluded.
And this surprises you how?
