Author's archive
Alice in Blunderland 0
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Share the politeness.
(snip)
“He was just passing through and started to shoot,” he said of the suspect. “He shot my wife and my daughter.”
Ryan’s Derp 0
Reckon he figures he’s done all the damage he could.
Now for a Little Eye Candy 0
Another photo from my brother in Virginia’s Northern Neck.
All That Was Old Is New Again 0
Thom explains how Nixon’s odious Southern Strategy led to Donald Trump.
Which Hunt? 0
Juanita Jean corrects some terminology.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Boys and their toys . . . .
Brymer then mistook the real gun for the airsoft gun and shot Smith.
Smith was transported to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Recommended Reading 0
I trained as an historian and, through that training and a lifetime of reading history and sociology, I am convinced that the past illuminates the present. Accordingly, I recommend A History of China by William Eberhard, as China is important and most Americans, including me, are woefully ignorant about its history and culture–well, not just ignorant, more like farcically misinformed and bigoted.
I do not claim that it answers every question nor that it is without bias (I don’t know enough about Chinese history to make that claim), but the author’s credentials are impeccable and the book is readable and accessible, having been written for the general reader; it can give perspective to why China is what it is now.
You can get it from Project Gutenberg (easily the most noble of internet projects) and read it with the free FBreader.
Maps of China through its history from Chinahighlights.com illuminate the narrative.
To get a sense in English of day-to-day life in ancient China, you probably can’t do better than Robert van Gulik’s Judge Dee mysteries, which I first encountered in a marvelous little bookshop on 33rd Street across from Madison Round Garden (it’s not at Madison Square any more and it is round) in New York City when I was involved in an extensive training project there in the early ’80s. I’m rereading them now.
Facebook Frolics, Guinea Pigs Dept. 0
Writing at Psychology Today Blogs, Susan Krauss Whitbourne describes how Facebook profiled its users victims. Here’s a bit of the article:
The Rule of Lawless, Warranted Intrusion Dept. 0
The news is full of stories about what the Mueller investigation’s raid on Michael Cohen’s office and home might portend and I will not speculate. You can find plenty if speculation at legitimate (and, no doubt, illegitimate–see below) news sites.
Nevertheless, I will this teeny contribution from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Jay Bookman regarding the nature of the search warrant (emphasis added):
(snip)
Such exceptions are rare, however. Judges asked to approve such an exception and grant a search warrant must be convinced of a prima facie case that a crime has occurred and that the lawyer had somehow been involved in the actual commission of that crime. That’s always a high bar for prosecutors to clear, and it no doubt becomes even higher when the client in question is the president of the United States.
In other words, this is no fishing expedition.
All the News that Fits 0
Lance Dutson, a Maine Republican think-tanker, is dismayed to realize that one of the things he helped tank was truth. Here’s a bit of his article; I urge you to read the whole thing (emphasis added).
What I didn’t understand then was how destructive a total lack of common reality could be. While I chided the filtered evening news model, I didn’t realize we’d replace it with an anarchic ecosystem of unvalidated truths. I never imagined conservatives could be so successful in undermining the credibility of the traditional media, and I never envisioned a world where common truth ceased to exist.
(snip)
In this model, stories do not need to be true, or fair. They need to make people mad enough to share them.
Sympathy escapes me.