2016 archive
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
More polite play:
Thus passeth another day in NRA paradise, where the right to unending carnage shall not be infringed.
Geeking Out 0
Listening to The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart on QMMP while checking email in Mutt in the Terminator terminal emulator while monitoring computer usage with GkrellM on Slackware –Current with a GUI managed by the Fluxbox window manager, praise Bob!
Tell Me Again Why They Are Called “Smart” Phones? Once More All Over Again 0
The four teenagers had ventured into the network of caves at Box to play the augmented reality game, which launched in the UK this week and is already sweeping the nation.
The stupid. It burns.
Addendum:
And then there’s this.
“Barefoot and Pregnant” 0
At the Boston Review, Kate Manne starts with Donald Trump’s overt contempt for women (even as he lusts after them) and reasons backwards to the more subtle and common aspects of misogyny and what it means. She concludes it’s all about keeping women in their place, their place, that is, as defined by the misogynists. A snippet:
The answer, all too often, is that it is transformed into moralistic forms—which are not, as (right wing apologist and professional misdirection player David–ed.) Brooks seems to imply, historical artifacts. What unites these varieties of misogyny, past and present, and moralistic and non-moralistic alike, is that they enforce the patriarchal order by lifting men up and taking down women.
Voltaic Brexit 1
I haven’t mentioned Brexit much because I don’t know enough about it; I know only what I’ve read in the papers.
It’s not that I fear displaying my ignorance; it’s that I don’t even have enough ignorance to display. (I will say that my gut instinct is that, in a globalizing world, promoting parochialism is not a propitious proposition.)
I will commend to your attention to the latest episode of the Bad Voltage podcast, which opens with a fascinating discussion about Brexit amongst one Brit living in Britain, one expat Brit, and one American, all of them accomplished and none of them political professionals. The Brexit discussion takes up the first half-hour or so of the show.
Words Matter 0
During the time that English grammar was becoming a study, Latin was the language of the educated. I did not understand English grammar until I took two years of Latin, as traditional English grammar is based on trying to squeeze English into the Latin model. It has always been an uneasy fit, as English is fundamentally a language of word order and Latin an inflected language.
(The spurious injunction to never split an infinitive is a bastard offspring of that process, as Latin infinitives are single words and ipso facto cannot be split.)
For example, consider the ablative absolute.
Break Time 0
Off to drink liberally.
Zero Per Cent 0
Elie Mystal reads a poll and wonders where the coverage went.
Tell Me Again, Why Are They Called “Smart” Phones? Reprise 0
What’s a little breaking and entering when it can get you hit points*?
After one such ‘gym’ was discovered on the grounds of the Technical University of Denmark, where construction work is currently taking place, a number of people tried to break in.
The university has asked via its website that players refrain from trespassing on the building site.
We are an society of international stupid.
_____________
*Do gamers still call them “hit points”?
Sentence Completion 0
Jonathan Capehart fills in the blanks for persons, such as Rudy Guiliani and Donald Trump, too stupid or too intentionally blind or too deeply invested in racism to get it. A snippet:
Folks, I’ve run out of things to say. The ignorance flowing out of the mouths of politicians has me reaching for words I’ve already written. So, let me restate some of them. The best way to understand the meaning of the phrase “Black Lives Matter” is to think of it as an incomplete sentence. To those African-Americans and other Americans marching to protest lives extinguished by law enforcement, the unspoken finish to the phrase “Black Lives Matter” is “as much as anyone else’s.”
Read the rest.
In related news, Kevin Riordan has an eye-opening moment.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Play politely.
Police are not releasing information about how the boys got a hold of the gun but they say the 13-year-old is expected to be okay, which Norwood said is a relief but she hopes others will be more careful.