August, 2021 archive
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Yet more child’s play in the NRA’s Garden of Bleedin’.
“Staying Longer Won’t Solve Anything” 0
David takes what I find a sane and balanced look at events in Afghanistan. (Short commercial at the end.)
We could stay and keep failing, or we could leave.
It Is Seldom Wise To Tempt Fate . . . 0
. . . for Fate has notoriously little will power in the face of temptation.
Vaccine Nation 0
The coach of the Washington Football Team is fed up with vaccine disinformation and the anti-vaxx crowd. Here’s a bit from the report:
“And then one specific news agency, every time they have someone on, ‘I’m not a doctor, but vaccines don’t work,’ Or ‘I’m not an epidemiologist, but vaccines are going to give you a third nipple and make you sterile,’” Rivera continued. “Come on. That, to me? That should not be allowed.”
Hmmmmm. One wonders what “specific news agency” he has in mind. No, one doesn’t.
A Notion of Immigrants 0
The Arizona Republic’s Elvia Diaz highlights the hypocrisy of Republicans’ tears over the plight of Afghan asylum seekers, even as they separated the families and caged the children of those closer to our borders. A nugget:
But the Republicans’ hypocrisy have no limits. To them, the desperation of asylum seekers from anywhere is just another weapon to attack President Joe Biden.
Don’t forget these are the same Republicans who’ve been attacking the president over the Central American asylum seekers also fleeing all sorts of violence and extreme poverty.
Fly the Fiendly Skies 0
SFGate talked with some flight attendants. What they learned about the conduct of passengers in these viral times is not pretty. A snippet:
We are not a civil society.
But we are a society of stupid.
Afterthought:
I see persons every day in stores wearing masks pulled down below their noses. I can’t help but wonder, “What the bleeding hell do they think they are accomplishing?”
I note that, in the past weeks, stores that once posted notices that masks for vaccinated visitors are optional have changed that to masks requested (or required) for all.
I find wearing a mask a small inconvenience in the face of the threat of death.
Maskless Marauders 0
Story via Delaware Liberal.
Aside:
That’s the school district where my kids went to school. Back then, it showed no signs of insanity.
Have Cake, Eat It Too 0
At Psychology Today Blogs, David Kyle Johnson explores the hypocrisy and fallacy of anti-vaxxers “my body, my choice” sloganeering. A snippet (emphasis added):
QOTD 0
Mikhail Baryshnikov:
Aside:
Occasionally I see videos of Baryshnikov’s dancing. I find myself in awe of how easy he made it look.
Gene Kelly once said of Fred Astaire (I’m paraphrasing here) that Astaire made everything look easy, whereas Kelly made everything look hard. Baryshnikov was the Astaire of ballet.
Recommended Listening 0
The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes.
In the early 1970s, the BBC ran two televison series, The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes and The American Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, dramatizing tales from the early days of mystery stories. These volumes compile the stories dramatized in those series.
Some of the stories are quite good; others, not so much. But they are all interesting, especially if you are a mystery buff like me, for the light they shed on the early days of the mystery genre. The contrasts between the British and American stories are also of note.
My especial favorite is “The Absent-Minded Coterie,” from the second volume of The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes. It is timely still; indeed, it presages all those phone calls you are getting telling you that your car’s extended warranty has expired.
The tales by R. Austin Freeman, creator of fiction’s first forensic detective, and by the Baroness Orczy, best remembered as the creator of the Scarlet Pimpernel, are also quite good. The others, well, hear for yourself.
