Author's archive
“Erasing History” 0
Bruce Lowry observes the eraser marks:
The report found that “very few public commemorations of African Americans’ suffering during the post-slavery era exist today” and that “no prominent monument or memorial” existed to mark the deaths of the nearly 4,000 Southern lynchings that had been documented at the time of the EJI’s report in 2015.
Follow the link for the complete article.
A Rudderless Ship of State 0
Shorter Dan Simpson: Incoherent bluster is not a foreign policy.
Understanding the Trumpler 0
At Psychology Today Blogs, Joe Navarro, without naming names, offers a guide.
Profiled 0
A life-long Seattle resident tells the story of what happened when she pulled over (good on her, by the way) to answer a message on her cell phone. A nugget:
The driver left her car idling in the middle of the street and approached my window.
“Am I in your way? What’s going on?” I asked.
“Yes, you are. I live here.”
“I thought this was a public street? I could be waiting for my child.”
“Well, I have children, too. And I pay a shit ton of money to live here. You need to leave.”
I was shaken. I, too, live in this neighborhood. I lived on this very street. I learned to ride a bike here. My daughter plays at this playground. And yet, because I was a black woman, the other driver assumed I didn’t belong, and ordered me to leave.
Read it.
The Power of Google 0
Josh Marshall has a long and thoughtful piece on the power of Google (and, by extension, other concentrators of influence). The piece was prompted by allegations of Google’s bullying a website the views of which Google found distasteful (no, it wasn’t one of those websites that have been so much in the news lately). Rather, it seems from the context of Marshall’s remarks, which are all I know of the situation at this point (links are in the post) to be a website that questioned the concentration of power in the hands of corporations, including digital outfits such as Google.
I have always found Josh Marshall to be a careful and deliberate thinker and commend the post to your attention. Here’s a bit:
Tells 0
A sure sign that someone is a letting his racism flag fly: Complaining about discrimination against “European-Americans.”
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Be polite to your elders.
(snip)
When police arrived they found a woman suffering from a single gunshot wound. She was transported to UMC Trauma and later pronounced dead.
Thus passeth another day in NRA Paradise.
Carrion Crows 0
El Reg reports:
“One thing we’ve learned at the Federal Trade Commission is that scams often follow the news – especially when there’s a natural disaster, like Hurricane Harvey, in the headlines,” the warning said.
The robocalls claim that the target’s flood insurance premiums are “past due,” and in order to have any coverage for damages caused by Hurricane Harvey they need to make an immediate payment.
Techcasting 0
In a lengthy article at Psychology Today Blogs, Rosalind C. Barnett and Caryl Rivers consider whether science supports James Damore’s recent misogynist memo. You’ve probably heard of it; Google fired him for it and he’s now threatening to sue them for something or other his ittle bitty fees-fees got an owie cuz his male pwivilege didn’t give him the fwee pass he’s enjoyed up till now.
In the memo, he whines about political correctness, claiming that being polite (which is fundamentally what “political correctness” boils down to) is somehow a thing of “the left.”
(Remember, those who complain of political correctness wish the license to offend others without penalty.)
Opinions vary on his chances of winning any such suit.
Anyway, here’s a bit of Barnett’s and Rivers’s piece:
But are they? What are the real facts? We have been researching issues of gender and STEM (science, technology engineering and math) for more than 25 years. We can say flatly that there is no evidence that women’s biology makes them incapable of performing at the highest levels in any STEM fields.
They go on to skewer the so-called science that Damore cited in his screed.
Follow the link to take a look.
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*Middle name: That’s Ross “Why does anyone give me money for being always wrong” Douthat, in case you were wondering which one.
Profiles in Cowering 0
A Der Spiegel correspondent looks back on his two years living in an upscale suburb of Washington, D. C., and sees am undercurrent of fearfulness in day-to-day American life. Here’s short excerpt:
And it’s true, this country often drives people to despair, even if you live in a bubble. It is wrought with contradictions. Everyone talks about security, but the Americans haven’t even managed to impose reasonable controls on weapon ownership. Everyone talks about freedom, but then, at the swimming pool we went to a few streets to the north, girls were made to wear bikinis even as babies. If I bought a bottle of wine at the store, I had to keep it hidden in a dark plastic bag until I got home.
I commend the entire piece to your attention.