2020 archive
Grouch on the Couch 0
Ravi Chandra, writing at Psychology Today Blogs, shares his psychiatrist’s view of Donald Trump’s Axios interview, focusing on “what thought processes and relational qualities” the exchange revealed. Here’s a bit:
A patient with fixed ideas displays these typical defenses.
1. An insistence on their own point of view, and an inability to listen to, comprehend, or give any weight to the other party—usually because other people’s viewpoints are threatening and destabilizing to an already fragile ego and worldview.
2. In other words: I’m right and everyone else is wrong (stamps feet).
He doesn’t reveal anything fundamental we didn’t already know, but the perspective is interesting.
QOTD 0
Kerry Greenwood:
When will you learn . . . that inadvisable is not the same as undesirable.
Greenwood, Kerry, Murder in Montparnasse (Scottsdale, AZ, Poisoned Pen Press, 2005), p. 237
“American Exceptionalism” 0
The United States has most recently demonstrated its exceptionalism by its abject failure to contain COVID-19.
I can’t summarize or excerpt his piece and do it justice. Just go read it for yourself.
Trying To Stir Up Trouble??? 0
The Angry Grammarian is just askin’???
School Daze, Reprise 0
Georgia school system suspends student for not keeping the proper social distance–from “social” bleeping media.
Words fail me.
School Daze 0
Sam and his caller discuss back to school plans in these viral times.
Geeking Out 0
Listening to Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar at OTRnet in a VirtualBox VM of Windows 8 on Ubuntu MATE using the Fluxbox window manager.
Every time I use Windows, I am reminded of what a kludge Windows is.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
The Vice of the Turtle 0
Aside:
It has been my experience (and I have been unemployed, though I was lucky enough never to have to collect unemployment) that persons are almost never unemployed by choice, but almost always by circumstance.
The notion that persons can live satisfactorily on unemployment benefits is a fiction propagated by the rich and heartless.
Image via The Bob Cesca Show Blog.
Gaming the Numbers 0
The Department of Commerce is attempting to screw with skew the census. Here’s a bit from the report. I’ve emphasized their lamer excuse, which almost implies that they are doing their arithmetic by hand:
The latest updates to the bureau’s plans are part of efforts to “accelerate the completion of data collection and apportionment counts by our statutory deadline of December 31, 2020, as required by law and directed by the Secretary of Commerce,” who oversees the bureau, Director Steven Dillingham said in the written statement posted on the bureau’s website.
These last-minute changes to the constitutionally mandated count of every person living in the U.S. threaten the accuracy of population numbers used to determine the distribution of political representation and federal funding for the next decade.