March, 2019 archive
Lies and Lying Liars 0
Gina Barreca considers the wasteland of liars in our political discourse-doesn’t-really-seem-like-the-correct-term and remembers some liars she has known personally. An excerpt:
(snip)
But when you launder a lie, pass it along as the truth, put it into cultural and social circulation, it’s as if you’re handling dirty money. You hope nobody looks at it too closely or holds it up to the light for examination. It’s Gresham’s law, adapted: The counterfeit currency of lying will inexorably drive out the more valuable currency of truth.
Follow the link for more.
Geeking Out 0
The Hydrostat screensaver (one of the screensavers in the xscreensaver library) on Slackware 14.2 with the KDE desktop environment.
The Price of the Polity 0
Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, “I like paying taxes. They buy me civilization.”
David addresses the farcical notion that taxation (otherwise known as “paying your fair share”) is theft.
All That Was Old Is New Again 0
Writing in The Roanoke Times, John Freivalds sees disturbing echoes of the past in the present.
What Center? 0
Thom wonders what is this “center” of which the pundits speak, then goes on an epic rant about Republicans’ 90 year history of calling Democrats “socialists.”
The Bully’s Pulpit 0
Thomas Hills, writing at Psychology Today Blogs, dissects Donald Trump’s negotiation* strategy. A snippet:
Now when the bully (sorry, intimidator) pulls out, he says “We’re not going to pay you amount X.”
And the cycle continues . . . .
Hills goes on to explain why this is a loser’s tactic in international relations and accounts for so many of Trump’s “diplomatic” (I use the term loosely, natch) failures. Give it a read.
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*”Negatiation” would be more like it.
New Twists in Spam 0
Based on what I see in my mail client’s inbox, the latest spammer trick is to send emails with no dates in the email headers.