2024 archive
Signs of the Fall 0
I seldom look at the sport section of my local rag (except to read Bob Molinaro’s column, because he is a fine writer with a sharp pen and a wicked sense of humor). Even when I paid much more attention to sports than I do now, I was more interesting in watching competitions than in reading about them.
Nevertheless, as I leafed through the sports section on the way to the agony columns in yesterday’s paper (yes, paper, not electrons), something caught my eye.
My local rag now carries a syndicated column methinks no doubt subtly designed to suck people into covering sports betting.
We are a broken society.
Pay To Play 0
“Republican family values” is an oxymoron.
“Keep Calm and Soldier On” 0
Grunge_e_Gene offers some words of sanity for these parlous times.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Once again, politeness is a family matter.
Republican Family Values 0
Michael in Norfolk notes that they are phoning it in.
Lauren Boebert Is Not of This World 0
Sam and the crew talk a look at Lauren Boebert’s latest flip out. (Towards the end, they also take a few phone calls.)
(Originally posted earlier than planned because I made a proofreading error.)
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Politeness is a family value.
Deputies say they found a Gray Dodge Minivan parked on the curb in Moffett Road. They found 40-year-old Emiley Roney shot and unresponsive. Alongside the victim in the minivan was her husband, Martin Roney, and her father, Ricky Smith.
The MCSO says Smith was loading his 45 caliber handgun with ammo when it accidentally discharged hitting his daughter.
One more time, “accidental” and “negligent” are not synonyms.
“History Does Not Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes”* 0
John Rash hears a rhyme. Here’s a tiny reverberation:
(snip)
Tragically, total warfare isn’t just the stuff of history books or dramatic movies. It’s a returning reality.
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*Mark Twain.
“The Past is . . .Not Even Past.”* 0
At Psychology Today Blogs, Monnica T Williams discusses how racist stereotypes rooted in attempts to justify America’s original sin of chattel slavery have become accepted as fact in medicine. Specifically, she cites test used to diagnose asthma, a condition she must deal with. A couple of excerpts:
- A repiratory test called spirometry measures how well a person’s lungs are functioning.
- For Black people, the predicted normal values are adjusted 10–15% lower than for White people.
(snip)
A groundbreaking study by Diao and colleagues, published this year in The New England Journal of Medicine, showed that gold standard race-adjusted equations in lung-function tests underestimate the severity of Black patients’ lung problems and overestimate the severity of White patient lung problems, reinforcing inequalities in healthcare. These race-based calculations normalize lowered lung function for Black people, making them seem healthier than they are. In contrast, White people’s results are based on more sensitive classifications, leading to better access to care, support, and disability benefits.
Her entire article is worth your while. It illustrates how deeply racist stereotypes created to justify chattel slavery and theft of labor permeate and pollute our polity–even tainting so-called “hard” science–to this day.
As if the last election was not proof enough.
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The Rule of Flaw 0
Kimball Shinkoskey, writing at the Las Vegas Sun, is somewhat less than optimistic about the potential effects of the Supreme Supremacist Court’s decision to fabricate from thin air without any precedent whatsoever the doctrine of “presidential impunity immunity.”
