From Pine View Farm

February, 2023 archive

In the Face of the Evidence 0

Caption:  Early Science vs. Old Punditry.  Image:  One caveman gestures towards a creeping glacier.  Another says,

Click to view the original image.

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“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0

Yet another oxymoronic “responsible gun owner” discharges his responsibility.

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Books 0

At the Tampa Bay Times, history professor Charles B. Dew–who, like me, grew up under Jim Crow–explains how he came realize how he was raised to be racist and how eventually, through education and experience, came to recognize racism for the evil it is. Now retired, he has returned to his native Florida.

Here’s how he starts his article (emphasis added):

I was born and raised in St. Pete, and I grew up a racist. I have written about this process in a book titled “The Making of a Racist,” and one reason for my persistent juvenile bigotry was the fact that my racist ideas were never challenged, not once, as I went through North Ward Elementary School and Mirror Lake Junior High in the 1940s and ‘50s.

I suspect our current governor would be just fine with this.

Follow the link, where explains what he meant with the last sentence above.

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QOTD 0

Patricia McKillip:

Men see what they are most afraid of.

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And Now for a Musical Interlude 0

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Still Rising Again after All These Years 0

Jim Crow redux.

Aside:

Many years ago, during the height of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, the highest officials from my then-segregated school district drove to New Orleans for some sort of conference. My father later told me that one of them–who went on to serve competently and honorably as the county Superintendent of Schools for many years–told him this anecdote:

In Mississippi, the atmosphere was so hostile that the travelers–all white Southerners, remember–started to fake their accents to sound even more Southern than they already did.

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Then and Now 0

Then:

In a speech in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1901, William McKinley, 25th President of the United States, said,

Our differences are policies; our agreements, principles.

Now:

Marjorie Taylor Greene jeering President Biden during the State of the Union Address

Image via PoliticalProf.

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The Lake Effect 0

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Twits on Twitter 0

Geographically-challenged twits.

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Suffer the Children 0

Iowa Republican wants to bring back child labor.

Words fail me.

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Know Them by the Company They Keep 0

And some of them keep truly bad, bad company.

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QOTD 0

William Long:

Man, even the most savage and degraded, must have his god, or gods.

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Gaslit by a Gas Bag 0

Republican Elephant dangling from a giant balloon that looks like Donald Trump wearing a diaper that reads,

Click for the original image.

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Little More than Computer-Assisted Hockeypuck 0

St. Louis University Professor Matt Grawitch calls BS on ChatGPT. A nugget:

. . . although it may provide a coherent response, coherence is not synonymous with accuracy.

Follow the link for context.

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“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0

Yet another random act of politeness.

We are a broken society.

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Exploitation Nation 0

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Republican Family Values 0

Honest to Betsy, you can’t make this stuff up.

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Fly the Fiendly Skies . . . 0

, , , and be sure to do it with politeness.

We are a society of stupid.

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Ballooning Reports 0

At Psychology Today Blogs, Robert Bartholomew suggests that, based on past history (as opposed, I guess, to future history), we should be prepared for a a bunch of bogus balloon sightings in the next few months. An excerpt from his article:

I have been researching these scares for over four decades and conducted several studies involving aerial objects. Just before the outbreak of World War I, there were mass sightings of German Zeppelins in the skies in many Commonwealth countries that corresponded to the known positions of stars and planets that were misperceived as a menacing technology. One key driver of these scares is the fallibility of human perception which is notoriously unreliable and subject to error.

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QOTD 0

Joan Baez:

I’ve never had a humble opinion. If you’ve got an opinion, why be humble about it?

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