At the Black-and-White Café...

... let's get together.

"IRS: Cheapest Obamacare Plan Will Be $20,000 Per Family."

How can this possibly work?

"Legend has it that in 802 CE, Jayavarman II, king of the Khmers, first came to the Kuhlen hills, the future site of Angkor Wat."

"Later, under Jayavarman VII (1181–ca. 1218), Khmer reached its zenith of political power and cultural creativity. Jayavarman VII gained power and territory in a series of successful wars. Khmer conquests were almost unstoppable as they raided home cities of powerful seafaring Chams.... Following Jayavarman VII's death, Khmer experienced a gradual decline.... The Angkorian monarchy survived until 1431...."

In Cambodia, today's "History of" country.

Al Gore performs a breathing exercise...

... when he realizes that Jon Stewart's use of the phrase "voracious over-eater" isn't going to turn into a reference to Gore's obesity:



(My edit, my interpretation of what's going on here.)

Did Ted Cruz bully Chuck Hagel?

David Weigel thinks so.

My impression is that Hagel wasn't as bad as the naysayers are saying, but he should be tougher and more ready to fight if he's supposed to be the Secretary of Defense. Really: Why Hagel?

I'm inclined to think the President deserves the Cabinet he chooses, and I don't approve of destroying a guy just because there's blood in the water. But honestly, don't we need a stronger Secretary of Defense than Chuck Hagel?

"In the ’80s and ’90s, a liberal arts graduate who didn’t know what to do went to law school."

"Now you get $120,000 in debt and a default plan of last resort whose value is just too speculative. Students are voting with their feet. There are going to be massive layoffs in law schools this fall. We won’t have the bodies we need to meet the payroll."

Today's wedding photos are "all about the unexpected," because: "Brides are older these days..."

".... and have been to more weddings than you can shake a stick at. They’re tired of anything that feels cookie-cutter."

Plan the unexpected. People expect it these days. They are old, and they've been shaking a stick and cutting cookies for a long, long time.

"I’m a very upstanding person with a crystal clear reputation."

Said the real-and-fake antiques dealer. "People believe what they want to believe."

Lawsuit for $1.2 million brought by a man named Butt, who learned his Faberge egg wasn't real at an Antiques Roadshow event.

McCain "pressed Hagel on whether he stood by his opposition to the decision to surge U.S. troops into Iraq in 2007."

"Hagel, who once called the surge the 'most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam' resisted McCain’s repeated attempts to solicit a 'yes' or 'no' answer."

"I’m not going to give you a ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ I’ll defer that to the judgment of history... I did question the surge. I always ask the question: Is this going to be worth the sacrifice? We lost almost 1,200 Americans and thousands of wounded. Was it required? Was it necessary? I’m not sure. I’m not that certain that it was required."

Althouse unfair to F. Scott Fitzgerald?

Midway through my journey of isolating and writing about sentences from "The Great Gatsby," I find myself confronted by one creeley23 — a commenter within the confines of this Althouse blog — who says: "Hmm... rereading the first ten pages of Gatsby I see that Ann is picking klunky, atypical sentences out of the text."

I have chosen things like: "Sometimes a shadow moved against a dressing-room blind above, gave way to another shadow, an indefinite procession of shadows, that rouged and powdered in an invisible glass." And: "A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea."

But, in my defense, I have also chosen: "A breeze stirred the gray haze of Daisy’s fur collar." And: "Americans, while occasionally willing to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry."

Remember, the original idea was:

What I like [about "The Great Gatsby"] is that each sentence is good, on its own. Seriously. Test it out. "As my train emerged from the tunnel into sunlight, only the hot whistles of the National Biscuit Company broke the simmering hush at noon." Every sentence is a writer's inspiration....

I feel like starting a blog devoted to individual sentences in "The Great Gatsby," chosen randomly, and continuing until all the sentences have been used up.

I didn't start a new blog, obviously, only a daily discipline on this blog. I confess to not proceeding by random selection. But I haven't gone searching for "klunky" sentences. I've flipped around in near-random style, though. I don't use the first thing I see. Opening up Chapter 1 right now, I see  "I told him" and "We talked for a few minutes on the sunny porch." These are examples of non-"klunky" sentences that I would reject, but not because I'm gunning for F. Scott. My initial motivation was love. I thought of all the high school students — I remember being one — who were assigned this book and made to read the whole thing. That being the task, the really interesting sentences are speed bumps. They're completely annoying. You can't take the time to figure them out. What should be loved is hated. Later in life, I reread the book and enjoyed it, because of the worthiness of individual sentences.

Here's a way the book could be taught in a high school class. (But maybe they'd fire you!) Class, this is a book with some very weird sentences. Who can find one? Students read individual sentences out loud and the teacher cuts and pastes the sentences, so they are projected on the board. Encourage the students to pull out things that are the most outlandish and impossible to understand. Encourage laughter. Email the list of sentences to the class and have them reply to the email cutting out all but one sentence, the sentence they'd most like to talk about. Quickly read the email and pick a sentence that got a lot of attention. Puzzle through what it might mean with the students so that they appreciate the fun of getting wrapped up inside one sentence. Give them 20 minutes to write about one of the other sentences.

Must they read the book? Tell them they can read the book if they want. But tell them they can go to Wikipedia and read the plot summary and the list of characters there. The idea is to spend time with particular sentences and to figure out why someone would write like that. Must they love F. Scott Fitzgerald? No! They can be like Palladian — the original commenter genius of the Althouse blog — who said:

Has anyone calculated how long this Gatsby project is going to go on? How many sentences are in the book? How many sentences have been covered so far?

I ask partially out of curiosity and partly because I hate "The Great Gatsby". Why couldn't we have done Chaucer or "Paradise Lost" or something?

I said:

I don't think the project asks you to like "The Great Gatsby." It should work for the haters. Bring that hate!

Palladian said:

That's true! I think the general tone of the comments on these threads led me to think of them as reverential, but your writing about them is actually neutral and occasionally negative.

The watchword watchphrase of this blog has long been "cruel neutrality." And, indeed, I see that even before I responded to Original Commenter Genius Palladian, he was responded to by Upstart Commenter Genius betamax3000, who said:

"the Inquisition that goes on forever. Interminably."

(That's a quote from the post, which is about a "Gatsby" sentence that includes "interminable inquisitions.")

Ann has gone full Althouse Snow Globe Theory now:

"She sets the Snow Globe with cruel neutrality for us to shake and see patterns from the flitter. There is not the expectation of sentimentality. She is asking us to look, together; however, often there is no resolution, each reader seeing only his own flitter of understanding."

And there betamax3000 is quoting himself, from this earlier thread, about one of the least "klunky" sentences that has ever found its way into the "Gatsby" project:

"They knew that presently dinner would be over and a little later the evening, too, would be over and casually put away."

When can we put this "Gatsby" project away, like a dinner and an evening consumed blandly and casually in the Midwest, where all the Gatsby characters belong?

"I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all — Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life."

That's a sentence I've been saving, in my holding pen of sentences — "klunky" and not-"klunky" — that might get the nod some day on this project, and I guess I've given that one the nod today.

But is today the last day? Is it time to move on to "Paradise Lost" or "The Divine Comedy"?

If the assignment were — in this non-existent high school class — to read straight through "The Great Gatsby," you would know when you were done. The hard task your real teacher tasked you with has a knowable end. It's not interminable, even though the word "ceaselessly" is the 4th-to-the-last word. You get to "ceaselessly" and there's "into the past" and you are done. Your reading of "Gatsby" has receded into the past, like last night's huge, hard-to-digest dinner. You wake up with a stomachache. You can't take too much. You only want to nibble at the edges of some stale ideas, like maybe a blog post, a blog post about one sentence. You can nibble, and — in the comments — you can dribble. Like betamax3000 on last night's "Something was making him nibble" post :

Re: "Oh! For a minute there, I saw 'nimble,' and I was flummoxed."

I like nibble better. Not just because it makes me think of squirrels nibbling on a nosh. I often find myself nibbling at the edge of stale ideas. Of course, it is easier to nibble at the edges when the stale idea is square-shaped, like a behind-the-sofa-cushion Cheez-It: there are corners. Corners are the perfect nibble starters. Plus, Cheez-Its -- and the non-square Cheeto, for that matter -- leave your fingers orangey, like all the best ideas, stale or not.

So one morning when the sun was warm
I rambled out of New York town
Pulled my cap down over my eyes
And headed out for the western skies
So long New York
Howdy, East Orange*.

(*"Even when the East excited me most with sprawling, swollen orange fingers: you're gonna have to take notes faster, friends)

Which brings us back to a point: Naked Dylan Robot would love to hear Fitzgerald try to sing some of Fitzgerald's sentences. Naked Dylan Robot would laugh and laugh.

"Everybody's sturdy physical egotism must get stoned."

"When the winds of changes shift
May your malnourished peremptory heart always be joyful
And may your song always be sung
May you stay forever slightly worn, young man, with shell-rimmed glasses and scanty blond hair."

For a writer whose rep is based in large part on making words sing his words just don't... sing. Maybe Naked Albanian Phonetical Dylan Robot could give a try, but I don't think it would get there. Nor Naked Phoenician Dylan Robot, for that matter*.

(*this is -- of course -- self-contradictory: per Wikipedia "in Phoenician writing, unlike that of most later abjads such as those of Aramaic, Biblical Hebrew and Arabic, even long vowels remained generally unexpressed, and that regardless of their origin". No Naked Dylan Robot of any proud heritage could forsake the long vowels: exps: oooohhhhhmaaa-ma is this reaaaaaaally the eeeeend, etc etc).

Perhaps Naked Dylan Fitzgerald Cow could make a go of the following:

Now you see this one-eyed midget
Shouting the word "MOO
And you say, "For what reason ?"
And he says, "Hoo?"
And you say, "What does this mean ?"
And he screams back, "You're a cow
Give me some milk
Or else go home".

-- but Naked Dylan Fitzgerald Cow is a Talent. And not afraid to nibble, stale or no. Someone should make a Snow Globe for Naked Dylan Fitzgerald Cow: Ann could put it next to her Robot on her desk and take a picture. I would call in sick to work the next day.

Is your tummy feeling better now? Maybe saltines and ginger ale would help. That's what my midwest-born-and-raised mother would offer me when I was feeling queasy. But you've got to eat something. You must go on — ceaselessly, interminably — when the project is one sentence a day. One day at a time. One sentence at a time. One nibble at a time. One blog post at a time.

What's The Frequency?

It's a bar in Madison, where they won't have hip-hop shows anymore because there was a fight outside the other night and a gun was fired. The bar's owner, Darwin Sampson says: “It is truly unfortunate that I cannot host an entire genre of music and artists because of the idiocy of a couple people and the ineptitude of the security company that evening.”

What's the frequency?

"And Guy sank upon a couch of flowers/In an ice-ribbed underworld..."

"Awash in blossoming gold from a new sun/Tumbling out dark long-ago clouds..."

Maurice Sendak's last work.

This might help you bike in winter.

The jaunty music makes it seem like fun. I can do this. At 0:33, we got a laugh. ("Go out and buy or find a bike...") At 0:57 — "completely filthy with road grime" — I say, "This is where we lose all the women." At 1:30, the real problem emerges: You've got to keep going forward. You'll fall if you brake or slow way down or do anything other than "Let your momentum go. You are usually okay." Usually! But if 1 of my 60 minutes of riding is not okay, that's absurdly dangerous. "It's a skill," we're told, that you learn over time. But that assumes you don't die! Right after the expert says we can learn, we see a bike going down an icy path toward a curve with the icy lake straight ahead.

Cycling News to Lance Armstrong: "When you came into the sport, it probably wasn't to dope, it wasn't to cheat..."

"... but at what point, specifically, did you realize that was how cycling worked and that the governing body weren't dealing with the situation?"

Armstrong: "My generation was no different than any other. The 'help' has evolved over the years but the fact remains that our sport is damn hard, the Tour was invented as a 'stunt, and very tough mother f**kers have competed for a century and all looked for advantages. From hopping on trains a 100 years ago to EPO now. No generation was exempt or 'clean'. Not Merckx's, not Hinault's, not LeMond's, not Coppi's, not Gimondi's, not Indurain's, not Anquetil's, not Bartali's, and not mine."

Who's missing the point here where Sen. Durbin shouts "you missed that point" at the NRA's Wayne LaPierre?

Here's the video, featured at Talking Points Memo, under the heading, "Durbin Hits Back At NRA’s LaPierre: 'You Missed That Point Completely.'" TPM uses the words "sharply admonished" to characterize the drama in Durbin's voice and notes the "applause from some in the audience."



Full text at the link, but you have to watch the video to understand the incivility of Durbin's tone. Durbin does have a point that LaPierre missed, but why didn't he address LaPierre with respect and invite him to reflect upon the missed point or to refute it he can?

I asked that question out loud, and Meade said, "You're missing the point." 

Of course, Durbin's real point was not that background checks deter criminals from buying guns. The point was to find an opportunity for drama and to seize it. These so-called hearings have little to do with gathering information for the purpose of writing sound legislation. It's political theater to build support for... oh, what difference does it make what they really do as long as they do something?

I ask Meade if I can use his quote in this post, and he says yes, adding that I should let people know that he spoke in a completely civil tone.

Remember the great call for civility that went out — from President Obama and many others — after the Tucson shootings? I've always used the tag "civility bullshit" for that topic, because I never believed that it was intended to apply across the board. Imagine the reaction in the media if LaPierre had used the tone employed by Durbin.

Having sex does not burn 100 to 300 calories.

It's more like 21 calories — according to a scientific study that reveals the average length of the oft-touted exercise is a mere 6 minutes.

"Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart."

Oh! For a minute there, I saw "nimble," and I was flummoxed. But nibble.... I can picture that. Nibble at the edge... The "stale ideas" seem to be a wafer cookie with a thin edge, suitable for nibbling.

This is our sentence for the day, taken out of context from "The Great Gatsby," in our "Gatsby" project.

So here's a man, nibbling at the edge of the stale-idea cookie because something was making him. He feels forced to eat stale ideas, but he's resisting, because he's only nibbling... and only around the edge. We see this nibbling, and it gives us the impression that he's hungry, he's lacking nourishment. And what is this nourishment he's missing, that which propels him into edge-of-stale-ideas nibbling? It is something that existed in the past, but no longer. It was his sturdy physical egotism. And the part of him that needs nourishment, that pursues stale ideas in this pathetic edge-nibbling, was his peremptory heart.

Now that we've stabilized ourselves within the structure of the sentence, let's focus on 3 adjectives: sturdy, physical, and peremptory. The man's egotism — the erstwhile food for the heart — was sturdy and physical, and his heart — which craved sustenance — was peremptory. It seems that sturdy and physical are opposed to peremptory. His egotism can't feed his heart because it's not the right kind of food. It's sturdy and physical. But the heart is peremptory. Peremptory means absolute, decisive, resolute, imperious.

There's a similarity between this heart and this ego. Why can't the ego feed the heart? The heart demands more than the sturdy physical egotism. The heart is set on something more subtle and spiritual. He'd like to devour a casserole of profound philosophy, but here are these brittle little idea crackers for noshing.

"Sally Starr is an icon, and she will always be remembered as an icon. She was someone who was pure."

"Her persona was always Sally Starr. She understood the importance of being a personality on and off the air. She was always in costume. She represented the true style of what it was to be a personality."

Goodbye to Sally Starr, who died 2 days before her 90th birthday. When I think of days in the 1950s in front of the television, I think of "Popeye Theater" and Sally Starr, "your gal Sal," forever in our hearts!

"Update: It turns out that Giffords's speech therapist wrote the note, not Giffords herself..."

"... and that Americans for Responsible Solution's reference to 'Gabby Giffords' handwritten testimony at the Senate Judiciary Committee' meant 'handwritten' in a general sense. I've updated the headline and text of this post to make that clear."

Oh... so... all that meaning....

"Yes! I am always thinking of two-toned shoes. I’m never not thinking about them."

"This is perfection. Why are most shoes so boringly monochromatic?"

(Bonus: Amazon shopping link for 2-toned shoes. Special recommendations: here and here.)

"At-Home Dads Make Parenting More of a 'Guy' Thing."

From the Wall Street Journal:

At-home dads... take pride in letting their children take more risks on the playground, compared with their spouses. They tend to jettison daily routines in favor of spontaneous adventures with the kids. And many use technology or DIY skills to squeeze household budgets, or find shortcuts through projects and chores, says the study, based on interviews, observation of father-child outings and an analysis of thousands of pages of at-home dads' blogs and online commentary.

"Just as we saw a feminization of the workplace in the past few decades, with more emphasis on such skills as empathy and listening, we are seeing the opposite at home—a masculinization of domestic tasks and routines," says Gokcen Coskuner-Balli, an assistant professor of marketing at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., and lead author of the study. "Many men are building this alternative model of home life that is outdoorsy, playful and more technology-oriented."

Forget Beyonce. It will be Bob Dylan entertaining us at Super Bowl half-time.

That's what Tim Heidecker says:

[Dylan] is replacing Beyonce who dropped out after her inauguration lip synching scandal.

“Running Out The Clock” is a previously unreleased song from Dylan’s 1983 “Infidels” album. I guess it makes sense… the football metaphors and references.

Song audio at the link. I find this a tad hard to believe. I love old Bob, but I don't picture him in this setting, and I can't imagine Beyonce is so easily embarrassed.

ADDED: The "Infidels" album has a song with the phrase "running out the clock" in it. It's called "Neighborhood Bully," and whatever they tell you about violence in football, it's not about football. It's about Israel. Lyrics here. Audio. Buy it here.

Gomer is gay: Jim Nabors marries his partner of 38 years.

"I haven’t ever made a public spectacle of it.... Well, I’ve known since I was a child, so, come on."

"It’s not that kind of a thing. I’ve never made a huge secret of it at all. My friend and I, my partner, we went through all of this 38 years ago. So I mean, we made our vows and that was it. It was to each other, but nevertheless, we were a couple.”

At the Alien Abduction Café...

... pay attention.

(Animation of my photograph by Chip Ahoy.)

"A man is only as old as the woman he can feel inside of him trying to express herself."

A translation of the French that was itself a translation of "You’re only as old as the woman you feel" — an old Groucho Marx joke — which had been given as an example of an untranslatable sentence.

"Speaking is difficult, but I need to say something important. "

"Violence is a big problem. Too many children are dying. Too many children. We must do something. It will be hard. But the time to act is now... You must act. Be bold. Be courageous. Americans are counting on you."

Gabrielle Giffords speaks very slowly and very briefly to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

ADDED: Is she a witness or an exhibit?

What is dehumanizing?
	For her to be used, like that, as an exhibit.
	For Althouse to suggest -- even in a question -- that she is being used as an exhibit.
	I see nothing remotely dehumanizing here, even if she is more of an exhibit than a witness.
	The real dehumanization is the killing that happens with guns. Get on with the gun control. Now!
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Welcome to Bonehouse.

(This morning.)

"European explorers and missionaries.... compared the organisation of the kingdom of Burundi with that of the old Greek empire."

"It was not until 1899 that Burundi became a part of German East Africa."

Unlike the Rwandan monarchy, which decided to accept the German advances, the Burundian king Mwezi IV Gisabo opposed all European influence, refusing to wear European clothing and resisting the advance of European missionaries or administrators. The Germans used armed force and succeeded in doing great damage, but did not destroy the king’s power. Eventually they backed one of the king's sons-in-law Maconco in a revolt against Gisabo. Gisabo was eventually forced to concede and agreed to German suzerainty.....

With WWI, Belgium took over, running things "through indirect rule, building on the Tutsi-dominated aristocratic hierarchy." Independence came in 1962, and "Tutsi King Mwambutsa IV Bangiriceng established a constitutional monarchy comprising equal numbers of Hutus and Tutsis." Horrific events follow.

In Burundi, today's "History of" country.

Let me see your workspace.

Lots of links to photos, collected in a Metafilter post, but the links all go to LinkedIn, and there's some serious hostility to LinkedIn for spamming us all these years. And it's not just that....

I'd be happy if they'd just get rid of the "influencers". It seems as if they had deliberately set out to make a list of the most annoying, unselfconscious people on Earth. I mean, which other list manages to contain the globular egos of David Cameron, Deepak Chopra, Richard Branson, Arianna Huffington and Martin Varsavsky, a.o.?

If you want to see the workspaces of some admirable people, I love this book, "Writer's Desk," with excellent photographs by Jill Krementz (who was married to Kurt Vonnegut) and an introductory essay by John Updike.

And here's what my desk looks like right now:


(Partial view, with snow.)

ADDED: What's with "a.o." in the blockquote above? Is this another call for me to check Urban Dictionary?

A.O.    7 up, 3 down
Stands for Accidental Ownage. When someone shows off and fails, or something like that.

Dude, this guy was trying to do a handstand on a rail and he flipped over.
Whoa, that's total A.O.

Thomas Friedman calls on Obama to stress "the private side..., a lot more entrepreneurship, a lot more start-ups and a lot more individual risk-taking..."

"... things the president rarely speaks about."

Somehow, this column is called "It’s P.Q. and C.Q. as Much as I.Q." It's some lingo that replaces entrepreneurship and individualism:

The winners won’t just be those with more I.Q. It will also be those with more P.Q. (passion quotient) and C.Q. (curiosity quotient) to leverage all the new digital tools to not just find a job, but to invent one or reinvent one, and to not just learn but to relearn for a lifetime. Government can and must help, but the president needs to explain that this won’t just be an era of “Yes We Can.” It will also be an era of “Yes You Can” and “Yes You Must.”

Why did Friedman use the terms P.Q. and C.Q.?
	NYT readers are afraid of individualism and other ideas associated with the right.
	NYT readers pride themselves on their I.Q., so P.Q. And C.Q. resonate.
	Best-seller writers like Friedman need to brand themselves with unique terminology.
	It connects the idea to Obama, whom NYT readers stereotype as having a high I.Q.
	Passion and curiosity fit better with the way women feel about themselves.
	All of the above.
	More than one, but less than all of the above. (Explain in the comments.)
	None of the above. (Explain in the comments.)
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"How the left-wing media lied about Newtown 'hecklers.'"

Shameful.

You know you're really old...

... when the Urban Dictionary "Urban Word of the Day" distinguishes 2 definitions, one for young hip folk and one for old businessmen and you've never even noticed the old-businessman one. The word — phrase, actually, but it's the height of oldness to be pedantic about that — is "out of pocket."

And, no, the old businessman meaning is not paid for with one's own money, like "out of pocket expenses." The new old meaning is unreachable by the normal means of communication (which, I suppose, is the coverage of a cell phone network).

The supposedly hip and young newer meaning seems to be just another way to say out of control.

Instapundit reviews Al Gore's new book.

The book is "The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change." Yeesh. What a title. Drivers. But he couldn't just call it "The Future." That would be dumb. And people love lists. Lists make it seem possible to read a whole book.

So Six Drivers. Sounds almost sexy. Six ≈ sex, and driver seems like a way to refer to one's chakra in old songs like "Me and My Chauffeur Blues."

That's all I have to say because I haven't read the book. It just came out today yesterday. Instapundit got to drive into the future, and having read "The Future," can give a substantive account. So go read his review. It's mixed.

Rubio: "The president clearly outlined that he was gonna push on [immigration], the media was gonna focus on this..."

"... the Senate Democrats were gonna push on this issue, and I thought it was critically important that we outline the principles of what reform is about."

Look, I think there's this false argument that's been advanced by the left that conservatism and Republicans are anti-immigrant and anti-immigration.  And we're not.  Never have been.

On the contrary, we are pro-legal immigration.  And we recognize that our legal immigration system needs to be reformed.  We also recognize, because conservatism's always been about common sense, that we do have an existing problem that needs to be dealt with in the best way possible.  Now, it was dealt with in 1986 in a way that was counterproductive.  Well-intentioned, but counterproductive because, A, they granted a blanket amnesty to three million people at the time, or that was the estimate, and, B, they didn't do any of the enforcement mechanisms.  And so our point is if we're gonna deal with this, let's deal with it once and for all and in a way that this never, ever, happens again....

In the absence of stepping forward with our own principles, the left and the president will tell people what we stand for, and it's not necessarily gonna be true.

Much more at the link. (It's an interview conducted by Rush Limbaugh.) You see what Rubio is saying: The President and the congressional Democrats, with the help of the media, have the power to forefront this issue and to make it work powerfully for their political benefit. If the Republicans hang back, they will get portrayed as villains. So it was necessary for Rubio to step forward and be the face of the Republican Party to give it some chance at looking at least somewhat good as this issue plays out.

Cissy Houston's harsh memoir about her daughter Whitney Houston...

... may have something of a homophobic theme. I read the linked article because it's linked at Drudge: "CISSY DISSY: Whitney Houston's Mom Writes Unflinching Memoir..." The article characterizes the book, but all the interesting material comes from interviews that have been available for a while, so the article might not represent the book accurately. ("Nippy" = Whitney.)

Houston moved out of the family home an into an apartment with her friend Robyn Crawford at age 18. Crawford was gay, and Cissy did not like her. “What made Nippy’s move particularly hard for me was her decision to room with Robyn Crawford in an apartment in Woodbridge, New Jersey. She knew how I felt about Robyn, but she was determined to live with her anyway. It wasn’t that there was serious tension between Robyn and me— we just didn’t see eye to eye. Still, we tried to be respectful of each other and of our places in Nippy’s life, and we figured out how to give each other the necessary space. We had our love for Nippy in common, and though we rarely agreed, we were at least able to keep things from being too uncomfortable when we were all together.”

Later Crawford moved with Whitney into her big mansion in Mendham, New Jersey. “Early on, Robyn Crawford nicknamed me “Big Cuda”— short for barracuda— and that suited me just fine. The name stuck, and from then out, whenever I’d be coming somewhere to see Nippy, people would warn each other that Big Cuda was coming.”

But it was Crawford who had the guts to tell Cissy about Whitney’s drug problems early on, long before Bobby Brown arrived on the scene.

Seems like it's Crawford who has the interesting memoir material.

At the Sunset Café...

... you can settle in for a long night of conversation.

"The door that I pushed open, on the advice of an elevator boy, was marked 'The Swastika Holding Company,' and at first there didn’t seem to be any one inside."

What? Why is there a Swastika Holding Company in "The Great Gatsby" — which takes place in 1922 and was published in 1925? It's simply bizarre. What did a swastika mean then? Why did F. Scott Fitzgerald put that name on a door that was pushed open on the advice of an elevator boy only to reveal the seeming absence of anyone?

That's our "Gatsby" sentence today in the "Gatsby" project where each day we look at one sentence in isolation. Here, we are left to wonder. Or check Wikipedia. Swastikas go way back:

The earliest swastika known has been found from Mezine, Ukraine. It is carved on late paleolithic figurine of mammoth ivory, being dated as early as about 10,000 BC....

In India, Bronze Age swastika symbols were found at Lothal and Harappa, Pakistan on Indus Valley seals. In England, neolithic or Bronze Age stone carvings of the symbol have been found on Ilkley Moor....

Etc. etc. etc. Spin forward. What was up with the soon-to-be-abjured symbol in the early 20th century?



Caption: "The aviatrix Matilde Moisant (1878-1964) wearing a swastika medallion in 1912; the symbol was popular as a good luck charm with early aviators."

Googling around, I found this year 2000 Vanity Fair article about "The Great Gatsby" written by Christopher Hitchens:

References to Jews and the upwardly mobile are consistently disobliging in the book... but it gives one quite a turn to find Meyer Wolfshiem, he with molars for cuff links, hidden Shylock-like behind the address of “The Swastika Holding Company.” Pure coincidence: the symbol meant nothing sinister at the time. Still, you can get the sensation, from The Great Gatsby, that the 20th century is not going to be a feast of reason and a flow of soul.

A feast of reason and a flow of soul. Oh! But I want this blog to be a feast of reason and a flow of soul. And I'm drifting away from my purpose: the sentence, in glorious isolation. How can we beat that swastika back into the stark confines of the sentence? The elevator arrives, we step out, we find a door, the door is marked, and there doesn't seem to be anyone — any one — inside.

At first!

Arms transplanted.

To an Iraq War veteran who lost both arms and both legs.

Brendan Marrocco is the first Iraq War veteran to survive losing all four limbs in a bombing

His chief surgeon, Dr. W.P. Andrew Lee, said Marrocco’s operation was “the most expensive and complicated arm transplant surgery ever performed."

Hillary: "I do want to see more women compete for the highest positions in their countries."

"... and I will do what I can, whether or not it is up to me to make a decision on my own future. I right now am not inclined to do that, but I will do everything I can to make sure that women compete at the highest levels not only in the United States but around the world."

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"Soon after the fall of Ava, a new dynasty rose in Shwebo to challenge the authority of Hanthawaddy."

"Over the next 70 years, the highly militaristic Konbaung dynasty went on to create the largest Burmese empire, second only to the empire of Bayinnaung."

Empires and dynasties galore in the history of Burma, our "History of" country today.

"Me at CNN was not an easy fit."

"The first month was tumultuous with several tumultuous times throughout. I liked to think of myself as job security for the public relations department. About the only thing the far right and far left could agree on was that I did not belong at CNN."

Erick Erickson, no longer the right-wing guy at CNN. Assuming CNN needs a right-wing guy "for public relations," what kind of right-wing guy should it be... and why did CNN think Erick Erickson was the guy in the first place? I suspect a bias about the right caused the choice, but that he was never really the right choice. Nothing against Erickson, but what makes TV talking-heads shows work?

"More birds and mammals die at the mouths of cats... than from automobile strikes, pesticides and poisons..."

"... collisions with skyscrapers and windmills and other so-called anthropogenic causes." 

Domestic cats — pet and feral — "kill a median of 2.4 billion birds and 12.3 billion mammals a year" in the United States — "most of them native mammals like shrews, chipmunks and voles rather than introduced pests like the Norway rat."

Purchase of the (yester)day.

Panasonic ER-GN30-K Vortex Wet/dry Nose and Facial Hair Trimmer, Black (Amazon Associates earnings to this blog: $1.00). Portal, vortex, orifice – wherever you enter, good grooming is never out-of-season at the Althouse blog.

I subscribed to the redesigned New Republic website, but I can't get it to work... [UPDATED].

... on my digital devices and I can't find subscriber help on the website.

When I go to the website in my browser from my desktop computer, I can see that I'm signed in. I am certain I know my sign-in information and my password. I've downloaded the iPad app, but when it asks me to sign-in, it doesn't recognize my information. When I go back to my desktop computer and search the website through my browser, I can't find any relevant place to go for help with my subscription.

I subscribed because I wanted to have the app experience on iPad. I thought Chris Hughes, having succeeded in co-founding Facebook, would have the functionality worked out in a lovely way. The display of articles actually is pretty nice, and the free app works without a subscription.

I know they want to make money, and I was willing to credit Hughes — if he pulled it off — with finally figuring out how to make traditional print media into a digital experience worth paying for. I would have given this project good press if I could, but I'm getting nowhere.

Another thing. When I filled out the form to subscribe, I filled in many blocks of the form — name, address, credit card number — before clicking to continue. The page refreshed with a completely empty form and the information that I'd done my credit card number wrong. I can't believe I bothered to do the whole form a second time.

It's incredible, after all the Hughes hoopla, that they didn't test out the site in advance to see how it worked with ordinary people attempting to use it intuitively.

UPDATE: I sent an email to the address that thanked me for subscribing. I explained the problem, and I got a response saying that "the current issue on the iPad is free and therefore requires no login. So we've disable [sic] this for the short-term in order to give everyone a chance to read our relaunch issue. You'll be able to log in as normal when we release our next issue in two weeks."

So the message I was getting saying they didn't recognize my login information was misleading. They really would, presumably, recognize it, if it were needed, but it's not needed yet. This was incredibly annoying!

This also means that my statement "the free app works without a subscription" is wrong. 

"Obama Will Include Same-Sex Couples In Immigration Plan."

That's your cue, Republicans, to say something stupid. He's roping you in. Come on. You can't resist!

The ethnic studies requirement.

We've had if for years at the University of Wisconsin. Here's an upcoming event:

The roundtable will include a presentation on the history of the requirement, an open-mic portion where attendees will be asked to share experiences with classes and make suggestions, and smaller discussions led by ASM Diversity Committee members. Attendees will also be provided note cards on which they can leave comments about their class experiences.

The committee is considering whether the requirement should be able to be satisfied with classes that "incorporate facets of personal identity beyond race and ethnicity, such as sexual orientation" and whether students should be required to take their ethnic studies class in their first 2 years of undergraduate study to enable them "to apply knowledge from the class to their educational experience." There's an idea of "revamp[ing the] requirement to make the classes a 'game-changer' for students, providing them with greater insight into their identities."

That made me want to look up the word "identity." There are lots of different meanings, but one is (from the OED):

The sameness of a person or thing at all times or in all circumstances; the condition of being a single individual; the fact that a person or thing is itself and not something else; individuality, personality.

Another is:

Who or what a person or thing is; a distinct impression of a single person or thing presented to or perceived by others; a set of characteristics or a description that distinguishes a person or thing from others.

Among the early quotes the OED uses to exemplify the meaning of "identity," we have 2 of history's greatest philosophers:

1694   J. Locke Ess. Humane Understanding (new ed.) ii. xxvii. 180   The Identity of the same Man consists... in nothing but a participation of the same continued Life, by constantly fleeting Particles of Matter, in succession vitally united to the same organized Body.

1739   D. Hume Treat. Human Nature I. i. 34   Of all relations the most universal is that of identity, being common to every being, whose existence has any duration.

If only a philosophy course could fulfill the requirement that has to do with gaining greater insight into one's identity! But perhaps students arrive at the university with a sense of identity that suggests different building blocks at the foundation of their higher education. Or perhaps — in the future — they have such as sense of their own identity that they do not arrive at all.

"It is with the greatest confidence that I will pass on the throne on April 30 to my son, Prince of Orange."

Says the Queen of Purple.



I mean Queen Beatrix.

Take the exam in Althouse's on-line class in media bias.

First, read this post about Dana Milbank's description of the way Senator Marco Rubio looked as he waited his turn to speak about the bipartisan immigration plan. Note the literary techniques he employs. He seems to be describing what he sees, but I implied that his descriptions revealed bias, and, indeed, that Milbank would like to destroy Marco Rubio.

Now, here's a video clip showing Marco Rubio giving his presentation. Feel free to listen to what he says, but I want you to concentrate on Senator Chuck Schumer, who can be seen at the left of the screen. Observe any gestures or expressions, because the assignment will involve describing him, deploying literary techniques of the sort we saw in Milbank's description of Rubio.



Here's the assignment. Write 2 descriptions of Schumer, in the style of Dana Milbank's description of Marco Rubio.

1. You are the equivalent of Milbank, but attuned to the goals of the Republican Party. You would like to impede the advancement of Chuck Schumer.

2. You are a Milbank-style columnist at a place like The Washington Post, and you'd like to further the political career of Senator Schumer.

Cast a critical eye on your work. Are your 2 descriptions equivalent? They should be equally accurate, equally presentable as journalism, equally in service to your political agenda.

What have you learned from this exercise? Has your respect for Milbank grown or shrunken? Explain.

"Republicans shouldn’t worry that President Obama is trying to destroy the GOP."

"Why would he bother?"

Subtext: It should be destroyed. It's already destroyed. Please think that. They're hopeless. All hope lies within the Democratic Party. No hope outside the Party.

Dana Milbank says "Marco Rubio was a bundle of nervous energy" who "poked his tongue into his cheek, he clenched his jaw, and he licked his lips."

"[A]s he waited his turn to speak about the bipartisan immigration plan he had helped to draft... He fiddled with his suit-jacket button once, then again, then a third time. He rubbed his fingers together, then interlocked them."

And I'm a bundle of nervous energy, poking my tongue this way and that, clenching my jaw, licking my lips, fiddling with buttons, rubbing and interlocking my fingers, as I watch to see how the media goes about accomplishing its plan to destroy Marco Rubio.

"A woman was swept out to sea by a large wave and drowned on a Northern California beach Sunday in the third such tragedy in the region this winter..."

"The 32-year-old woman was walking on a beach near Shelter Cove in Humboldt County with her boyfriend and dog when the wave pulled her out to sea...."

"Winter is an especially dangerous time (on beaches in Northern California), and sneaker waves can catch beach goers by surprise, washing them into the sea," the Coast Guard said in a statement. "People walking along the beach should not turn their back to the ocean."

Blood donor dogs and cats.

At the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine’s Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital:

To do that, the hospital has its own Animal Blood Bank with a dedicated core [sic] of 12 dogs and 11 cats who serve as regular donors, many of them the animal companions of students or staff members at the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine. “We actually have a waiting list of pets to become new donors,” notes Bach.

The typical canine blood donor is a healthy, larger dog — more than 50 pounds — that has been screened for blood borne parasites and diseases that affect the qualities of blood. Importantly, the dog donor possesses a good nature.

“We don’t sedate the dogs,” explains Bach, who says a typical blood draw from a dog takes about 7 to 10 minutes. “Cats are certainly different than dogs. Cats are a little more reclusive and sometimes have a little higher stress level in the hospital. They are sedated.”

Cats also need a more compatible blood-type cross match when they are getting transfusion.

They also do horse and cow transfusions.

Their most recent resident donor horse, Drive Thru, retired this fall after seven years of donating blood and serving as a calming presence and companion for any skittish equine patients at the hospital. In the hospital’s large animal practice, Drive Thru was a star, getting presents and mail from the children of clients and visitors and occasionally popping his head into the waiting room for peppermint candy, his favorite.

The resident cow donors are Maxine and Natalie, "beautiful and pampered Holsteins." How much blood goes into a cow getting a transfusion? 6 to 12 liters.

"One hopes Mr. Obama wouldn't be so eager to come to Mr. Putin's rescue."

"If the rumors are a Kremlin hoax, the U.S. should publicly shoot them down as quickly as possible. To allow them to spread would be a display of weakness — the kind that a bully like Mr. Putin is always eager to exploit. Back in 1961, the perceived weakness of young President John F. Kennedy at his Vienna summit with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev led indirectly to the Cuban missile crisis. Only when Kennedy showed resolve did the Soviets later back down."

Writes Garry Kasparov in the WSJ.

Tax.

You might want to buy Turbo Tax and minimize the pain. I know some people think the pain should be felt and the outrage kept ever raw. I used to do my taxes without even using a calculator. No more.

ADDED: I downloaded Turbo Tax and got part way into the process, which includes chatty notes "celebrating" the discovery of exemptions and photos of specific human beings —"Juan M." — smiling as if they are smiling at me and helping me.

"Sarah Palin: A political obituary."

The Washington Post teases its readers like this:



The headline at the link is different: "What Sarah Palin meant." She is gone. The living human shell that once contained Sarah Palin still walks the earth, but Sarah Palin, the repository of political meaning, is dead.

WaPo readers feel a chill of relief and ease down into another Chris Cillizza column. It's his column on the occasion of Palin's parting ways with Fox News, and he's got nothing new to say about her, other than that now, she's gone. Really dead. Ding dong.

"It was surreptitiously and illegally cast, discovered in a car wreck that killed its owner..."

"... declared a fake, forgotten in a closet for decades and then found to be the real deal."

Does an object retain the spirit of the dead?

"A month after a gunman killed 26 people at an elementary school, some Newtown parents say the building should be demolished..."

"... while others believe the school should be renovated and the areas where the killings occurred removed."

Racist, sexist graffiti in the new World Trade Center bathrooms.

Port Authority police are now investigating. Who wrote these things? The construction workers?

“Such slurs are offensive and have no place at the World Trade Center site or elsewhere,” PA spokeswoman Lisa MacSpadden said. “The Port Authority has zero tolerance for those who demonstrate intolerance.”

The construction company said it has an anti-vandalism policy which it would "reiterate" to its crews.

Hardhats who toil on the site said the foul writing on the walls is a fact of life at all job sites — and there’s not much anyone can do about it.

Black construction workers, victims of some of the most repugnant scrawls, were furious but said they don’t dare complain when they see the N-word.

“You ask any black person on the job, and they’ll say, ‘What can you do about it?’ ” said an outraged Tyson Patterson, 35, of the Bronx. “You talk and you get fired. I have to be political and pretend it doesn’t bother me.”

"Thus, the racial laws are the worst fault of Mussolini, who, in so many other aspects, did good."

"It is difficult now to put oneself in the shoes of who was making decisions back then.... Certainly the (Italian) government then, fearing that German power would turn into a general victory, preferred to be allied with Hitler's Germany rather than oppose it."

Berlusconi on Mussolini.

Later he said he "regretted" not conditioning his remarks on the "condemnation of dictatorships."

Lorrie Moore is leaving the University of Wisconsin.

A sad day for us!

She came here in 1984 — the same year I did — back when "Self-Help" was still a manuscript.

Purchase of the (yester)day.

"Tris Speaker: The Rough-and-Tumble Life of a Baseball Legend" [Kindle Edition] by Timothy M. Gay. (Amazon Associates earnings to the blog: $0.93). Thank you, all who shop through the Althouse Amazon portal and, by doing so, tacitly speaking to the blogger: Hey, keep up the rough-and-tumble good work!

The downside of the treadmill desk.

Typos.... "up to 11% deterioration in fine motor skills like mouse clicking, and dragging and dropping, as well in as cognitive functions like math-problem solving."

It's silly to walk on a treadmill or pedal a stationary bike while trying to work, but I highly recommend using a desk like this with a push-button motor that lets you move back and forth between sitting and standing. Here I am demonstrating it 2 years ago.

We liked it so much we bought a second one. Bought a second 27-inch iMac too.

"Even when the East excited me most..."

"... even when I was most keenly aware of its superiority to the bored, sprawling, swollen towns beyond the Ohio, with their interminable inquisitions which spared only the children and the very old — even then it had always for me a quality of distortion."

This is today's sentence in the "Gatsby" project, where we look at one sentence from "The Great Gatsby," in isolation.  We don't worry about what else is going on in the great F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. It's a sentence unto itself. Whatever feeling or meaning that is generated within the bounds of the sentence — that is our concern here. And we're allowed to get it wrong. We can go off the tracks. It's pure language and the journey from one capital letter — Even — to the period — distortion.

Are you even or distorted? Get a grip! What is exciting you? Why are you sprawling and swollen? Get a hold of yourself and your excitement and your keen awareness, or we'll cut you down to size, because you are not a child or an impossibly old geezer. You're someone upon whom falls the demand to control yourself, and so I'm inclined to subject you to The Inquisition, the Inquisition that goes on forever. Interminably.

Nobody expects the Ohio Inquisition!

"The Boy Scouts of America may soon give sponsors of troops the authority to decide whether to accept gays as scouts and leaders..."

"... a potentially dramatic retreat from an exclusionary nationwide policy that has provoked relentless protests."

"iVegetarian: The High Fructose Diet of Steve Jobs."

"Flirting with fruitarianism and other eating disorders of Steve Jobs."

None of us, of course, knows what caused the pancreatic cancer that led to Steve Jobs's  death, or what, if anything could have saved him....

For awhile at college, Jobs lived on Roman Meal cereal. He would buy a box, which would last a week, then flats of dates, almonds and a lot of carrots.   He made carrot juice with a Champion juicer, and at one point turned "a sunset-like orange hue."...

Too much fear of death, too much of a fantasy of getting control... hubris.

"From medieval times until the end of the 19th century, the region of Burkina Faso was ruled by the empire-building Mossi people..."

"... who are believed to have come up to their present location from northern Ghana, where the ethnically-related Dagomba people still live. For several centuries, Mossi peasants were both farmers and soldiers; as the Mossi Kingdoms successfully defended their territory, indigenous religious beliefs, and social structure against forcible attempts to conquer or convert them to Islam by Muslim peoples from the northwest."

Burkina Faso is today's "History of" country.

More recently, children of the 1983-1987 revolution: 

Champagne chair contest.

Previously noted here. Winner announced here:

At the Winter Sunset Café...

... it's not that bleak.

The bipartisan group of 8 senators presents an immigration reform proposal containing a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million who've illegally immigrated.

Here's the document. Summarized here:

It would allow undocumented immigrants with otherwise clean criminal records to quickly achieve probationary legal residency after paying a fine and back taxes.

But they could pursue full citizenship — giving them the right to vote and access to government benefits — only after new measures are in place to prevent a future influx of illegal immigrants....

[And they] would be required to go to the end of the waiting list to get a green card that would allow permanent residency and eventual citizenship, behind those who had already legally applied at the time of the law’s enactment.

"Google Now does a much better job, moment to moment, in anticipating the information that a user needs than Siri."

"So what can Siri do better? Have an emotional relationship with a user...."

Google Now does not attempt personality, merely efficiency, and given that company’s strengths, I think this is a good design decision. But if Apple cannot compete on sheer efficiency, can it make up for it with charm?

This is in fact one of the main uses for “personality” in humans—to make up for deficits....

Here's an illustration of how that works:



Once you know the programming is designed to smooth over the shortcomings of the product, will it still work? Maybe so. Another question is whether Apple will give us some alternative personalities. Siri comes across as a relatively perky and warm young female. That's not what everyone wants! I'd like to see some more amusing approaches. Why not a witty, bitchy older woman or a comical guy? Unfortunately, Apple won't associate itself with anything sexual, but I'm sure many users would like their computers' voice to take daring liberties with them.

ADDED: "The human brain is built so that when given the slightest hint that something is even vaguely social, or vaguely human... given the slightest hint of humanness, people will respond with an enormous array of social responses including... reciprocating and retaliating."

"The journalism in these pages will strive to be free of party ideology or partisan bias..."

"... although it will showcase passionate writing and will continue to wrestle with the primary questions about our society."

Our purpose is not simply to tell interesting stories, but to always ask why these stories matter and tie their reporting back to our readers. We hope to discern the hidden patterns, to connect the disparate facts, and to find the deeper meaning, a layer of understanding beyond the daily headlines.

So writes Chris Hughes about the redesign of The New Republic, which I was cranky about yesterday, because it kicked off with a kissy interview with Barack Obama.

I must say, I'd never paid any attention to Chris Hughes before, and I didn't yesterday until pushed by my commenters. On the evidence of the interview he and Franklin Foer did with the President, I saw him as another media suckup doing Democratic Party politics under cover of journalism. Seeing this "free of party ideology or partisan bias" business now only inclines me to scoff. If that's what you wanted as your brand, why did you lead off with that interview?

But I realize I need to get up to speed on this Chris Hughes character. I didn't even bother to name him in yesterday's post, and I've only just made a tag for him now. Sorry, I didn't bother watching "The Social Network." To the extent that I follow celebrities, I'm not particularly drawn to new media businessmen. I can keep track of Mark Zuckerberg up to a point, but I've never paid attention to the lesser Facebookians.

Here's a HuffPo article from last March about Hughes's purchase of TNR, noting that he was "a key player in President Obama's online organizing efforts in 2008." Why would we expect this man — who's only 29, by the way — to strive to be free of party ideology or partisan bias? I've got to assume the striving is toward seeming to be free of party ideology and partisan bias, because that's what journalists always say they are doing when they have ideological and partisan goals.

Based on that interview with Obama, I'd say Hughes is not striving that hard or he's not good at what he's striving to do or — most likely — he only wants to appeal to Democrats, so he only wants to do enough to seem to be free of party ideology and partisan bias to Democrats. Is this enough to make our target audience feel good about the nourishment they're getting from this source? The good feeling is some combination of seeming like professional journalism while satisfying their emotional needs that are intertwined their political ideology and love of party.

It's not just Phil Mickelson — plenty of high-income athletes want out of California taxes.

Mickelson was just the one who was PR-deaf enough to let us know how he feels.

Why do you think Tiger Woods lives in Florida?

In November, voters in California approved a ballot measure raising the top rate on income over $1 million to 13.3% (the increase applies retroactively to last year). ... Mr. Woods grossed $56.4 million in 2012. As a Floridian, he will keep about $7.5 million that he otherwise would have owed to the state of California. His net tax savings over his 16-year career come to about $100 million. Mr. Mickelson last year earned $60.7 million. Paying the 13.3% California rate, he will owe the state $8 million.

That takes Mickelson down to $52.7 million, putting him behind Woods, when he was ahead of him on the money list. Aggravating! (I know, I'm failing to take account of the way state taxes are a deduction on your federal income taxes and everything else that affects after-tax income.)

The benefit of living in a state without an income tax can be diminished by the "jock tax" that states impose on money earned by athletes when they're playing or training in the state. (Luckily for baseball players, spring training is in no-tax Florida or low-tax Arizona.) But in sports like tennis and golf where athletes can train anywhere in the world, a preponderance happen to migrate to states without an income tax.

These celebs — with their endorsements — need good PR, as the Mickelson slip proved. State tax proponents could get proactive and actively shame the sports stars who live in Florida without an adequate cover story. 

For instance, Serena and Venus Williams grew up in Compton, Calif., but moved with their father to Florida in the early 1990s.

Krugman sees a "major rhetorical shift" from Romney's campaign to Bobby Jindal's recent speech.

Krugman's column is titled "Makers, Taker, Fakers." Here's one thing that seemed off to me:

Mr. Jindal posed the problem in a way that would, I believe, have been unthinkable for a leading Republican even a year ago. “We must not,” he declared, “be the party that simply protects the well off so they can keep their toys. We have to be the party that shows all Americans how they can thrive.” After a campaign in which Mitt Romney denounced any attempt to talk about class divisions as an “attack on success,” this represents a major rhetorical shift.

There are 2 propositions: A. Those who are successful should be able to keep the fruits of their efforts, and B. All Americans should have the opportunity to work toward their own success.

Krugman comes close to saying Romney only said A and Jindal only says B.

But Romney continually said both things. His opponents worked constantly — and successfully — to make people feel that he was only saying A.  And Jindal is also saying both things. That's the function of the word "simply."

Jindal — in the quoted sentence — isn't saying Romney only said A. He's talking about the way people think about the Republican Party, which is in A terms, because that's the way Democrats have successfully framed them. Jindal is saying the B frame is better political rhetoric.

Krugman goes on to explain why B rhetoric doesn't properly apply to what Jindal and the rest of the GOP are really doing. That is, he's continuing the process that was used so successfully in the campaign to defeat Romney — pushing A, obscuring B.

There is no major rhetorical shift. Not from Jindal and not from Krugman. Everyone is doing, rhetorically, what they've been doing all along.

There are 2 propositions — A and B — that relate to GOP policy. GOP proponents portray them as 2 sides of the same thing: The reason why A makes sense is that it's part of how B works. Opponents of the GOP de-link A and B and portray B as a trick to get people to vote for the party that's only about A.

2 questions for the GOP: 1. How can you truly be about B, with A as a subordinate proposition? and 2. Can you get people to believe that's what you are?

Quantum smell.

"It challenges the notion that our sense of smell depends only on the shapes of molecules we sniff in the air."

Iran sends a monkey into space.

And — it says — "returning its shipment intact."

In 2010, Iran successfully sent a rat, turtle and worms into space. But an attempt to send a monkey up in a rocket failed in 2011.

Did this new monkey return alive and in good shape? Can't tell from "shipment intact" (which may be a translation).

Quite aside from concerns about the monkey, Iran's space program may be part of developing a delivery system for a nuclear bomb.

At the Ice Dog Café...

... let's romp.

"They knew that presently dinner would be over and a little later the evening, too, would be over and casually put away."

How do you feel about dinner? How do you feel about the remains of the day?

That sentence is from "The Great Gatsby," and it is our "Gatsby" sentence today.

I know that presently today's iteration of the "Gatsby" project will be over, and that signals to me that a little later, this day, the only January 27, 2013 that there will ever be, will be gone, consigned to the place jocosely, morbidly, existentially known as the dustbin of history. 

Another risk of fatness: health-care professional who too readily attribute any health problem to fatness.

UCLA sociology professor Abigail Saguy explains :

Scores of studies have shown that medical providers typically regard fat patients as lazy, self-indulgent and noncompliant. As a result, heavy patients don’t always receive the health care they deserve....

Many heavy women told me that doctors routinely blamed any ailment, from a fall to a sore throat, on their weight....

So there may be mistakes in treating fat people. That's plainly wrong and easy to condemn. It's harder to know how to react to criticisms like this:

One woman I talked to visited a new gynecologist, who, during her annual exam, began lecturing her about her weight. When the patient said she did not want to discuss weight loss, the doctor backed off. She resumed her lecture, however, during the pelvic exam, when the patient had her feet in stirrups and a speculum inside her. She told me she felt as if she were mentally “going somewhere else” — not unlike how many women feel while being sexually abused.

This is close to an etiquette consideration: What can you say to a woman while penetrating her vagina? From the patient's perspective, it's hard to know how tolerant or outraged to be. I think some doctors are obtuse about what they can say while they're probing a woman's intimate parts. They might think it's a good time for casual conversation, precisely to demonstrate how nonsexual what they are doing is. The woman might endure the situation, then feel bad about it afterwards. But I don't see much connection to that problem and the fact that one of the casual conversation topics the doctor might introduce is the way you need to lose weight. It's not a good time to try to take advantage of your close connection to the patient!

Finally, there's the health issue of stress, which can grow out of the problem of being overweight. Prof. Saguy seems to say that any message to fat people about the problem of fatness might only make matters worse. Elsewhere, I've seen commentary suggesting that it's the other way around. Lessening the social pressure leads more people to get and stay fat. Who knows where the greatest health risks lie? And should our decisions about how to talk to fat people be based on what's best for their health? Maybe not!

"Flames raced through a crowded nightclub in southern Brazil early Sunday, killing more than 230 people..."

"... as panicked partygoers gasped for breath in the smoke-filled air, stampeding toward a single exit partially blocked by those already dead."

“The band that was onstage began to use flares and, suddenly, they stopped the show and pointed them upward... At that point, the ceiling caught fire. It was really weak, but in a matter of seconds it spread.”...

Similar circumstances led to a 2003 nightclub fire that killed 100 people in the United States. Pyrotechnics used as a stage prop by the 1980s rock band Great White set ablaze cheap soundproofing foam on the walls and ceiling of a Rhode Island music venue.

"[T]he best pro-choice rebuttal to the young idealists at the March for Life or the professional women who lead today’s anti-abortion groups isn’t that they’re too reactionary..."

"... it’s that they’re too utopian, too radical, too naïve," says the NYT's conservative columnist Ross Douthat.

This means that the abortion rights movement, once utopian in its own fashion, is now at its most effective when it speaks the language of necessary evils, warning Americans that while it might be pretty to think so, the equality they take for granted simply can’t be separated from a practice they find troubling.

For its part, if the pro-life movement wants not only to endure but to triumph, then it needs an answer to this argument. That means something more than just a defense of a universal right to life. It means a realist’s explanation of how, in policy and culture, the feminist revolution could be reformed without being repealed.

"Under Boris I, Bulgarians became Christians..."

"... and the Ecumenical Patriarch agreed to allow an autonomous Bulgarian Archbishop at Pliska. Missionaries from Constantinople, Cyril and Methodius..."



"... devised the Glagolitic alphabet, which was adopted in the Bulgarian Empire around 886.... In the early 9th century, a new alphabet — Cyrillic — was developed at the Preslav Literary School, adapted from the Glagolitic alphabet invented by Saints Cyril and Methodius...."

In Bulgaria, today's "History of" country.

In the following centuries Bulgaria established itself as a powerful empire, dominating the Balkans through its aggressive military traditions, which led to development of distinct ethnic identity. Its ethnically and culturally diverse people united under a common religion, language and alphabet which formed and preserved the Bulgarian national consciousness despite foreign invasions and influences.

The "noble behavior" of Germany and Europe on climate change is "inviting freeloaders."

German government adviser Kai Konrad says: "It's a mistake to believe our noble behavior will so greatly impress others in these talks that it will move them to make concessions in return."

At an international level, we can expect that our one-sided measures to avoid emitting climate-damaging CO2 actually serve to suppress reductions other countries might otherwise make. On balance, our well-intentioned behavior is expensive for us and does nothing to protect the climate....

Everything we know suggests that Central Europe will suffer comparatively little from global warming. Berlin will simply have the temperatures that Rome does today. The adjustments we will have to make are quite manageable....

The amount we're spending in an attempt to reduce CO2 would be better invested in education and health in the regions that are under threat. Our goal should be to improve economic conditions in developing countries, because that in turn strengthens those countries' ability to adapt to climate change.

NOTE: Adapt to climate change. This is where we are heading. That's the inconvenient truth right now. The change will come, and we will need to adapt as actual changed conditions force us to adapt. We've been told the problem with adapting as the change occurs is that it will happen too quickly. Climate is always changing, but the problem with man-made climate change is that it comes too fast.

Why can't we slow the pace of change by changing what we do before the real-world change happens? It would require radical sacrifices and readjustments before we feel the pressure of the actual changes in the climate. People have trouble adapting quickly, which is supposed to be why we must act now, but it's also why we're not adapting to the predictions. The only thing we will adapt to is the climate change as it arrives. If it arrives quickly, it will challenge our capacity to adapt quickly, but we will do what we must, which will vary from place to place.

That's what Konrad is recognizing, even as he gives some sympathy to the people in the parts of the world who will suffer the most. They are also the "freeloaders" who won't make "concessions" to the first-world countries like Germany that might have nobly embraced sacrifice early on.

NOTE: In the comments, please don't rehash the question of whether global warming is a hoax, whether the predictions of climate change are correct, and so forth. Assume for the purposes of this discussion that the predictions are correct, that Berlin will become like Rome — and Madison like Mobile, Alabama — by midcentury. This post isolates a specific set of ideas that requires this assumption and the other — oft-discussed — topic will be a distraction.

Gabby Giffords, ever smiling, struggles through an interview with Diane Sawyer.

Giffords can only get a few words out — "so slowly" — and Diane Sawyer has no compunction about supplying words all around Giffords's words, most notably at the end of the interview — you have to watch the video — when she turns Giffords into a puppet who voices the last word to a long sentence yammered out by Sawyer. Sawyer repeatedly assures us that Giffords understands everything and is able to think well, that her only intellectual deficit is in speaking. We're told how effective Giffords will be in pressuring Congress to enact gun control. She will be taken around to the members of Congress so they will be subjected to the ordeal — if they want to say "no" — of saying "no" to her face.

This is how it's done. At what point do you say "no"... enough?

ADDED: The most poignantly telling moment in the interview is when Giffords is invited to say what matters most to her. She says: "family."

"Can you tell us a little bit about how you've gone about intellectually preparing for your second term as president?"

The New Republic promotes its "redesign" in email that says I "signed up to get an early look at." (I did?) I'm sent to this interview with Obama, which takes so absurdly long to load that I go off and write other posts before rediscovering the open tab. I see Obama's smiling eyes peeking out over the top of the headline "Barack Obama is Not Pleased." I pause and contemplate 2 things: 1. Do the redesigners not understand the rules of capitalization? and, 2. Did they intend to allude to the famous Queen Victoria quote "We are not amused" — that is, did they intend to imply that Obama uses the royal "we"?

The subtitle is "The president on his enemies, the media, and the future of football," so I guess that's what he's "not pleased" about. I can see not being pleased by one's enemies, but how can he not be pleased by the media? The media fawn over him. What more can he want? And the future of football... I guess TNR threw that in to signal that there's going to be some fun somewhere on this page that took so long to load.

I scroll down past 6 paragraphs of introductory text to get to the actual interview, and that's the first question: "Can you tell us a little bit about how you've gone about intellectually preparing for your second term as president?" See what I mean about fawning? My first bite of the "redesign" is thoroughly cloying. It seems to be cloying even to Obama. He says:

I'm not sure it's an intellectual exercise as much as it is reminding myself of why I ran for president and tapping into what I consider to be the innate common sense of the American people.

I wish I could read what went through his head when he heard that question, before he said, in so many words, that's a stupid question. I think it was something like: These elite media guys are so in love with their idea of me as an intellectual. 

That first question was asked by Chris Hughes. It took 2 fawning elite media guys to interview Obama. The other one is Franklin Foer, and his first question is: "How do you speak to gun owners in a way that doesn't make them feel as if you're impinging upon their liberty?" Later, FF comes up with:

Sticking with the culture of violence, but on a much less dramatic scale: I'm wondering if you, as a fan, take less pleasure in watching football, knowing the impact that the game takes on its players.

Wait. We were talking about the "culture of violence" when we talked about gun rights and we're continuing to talk about "the culture of violence" when we talk about football?! Noted.

By the way, credit to FF for extracting from Obama that he shoots guns "all the time," "up at Camp David," where "we do skeet shooting." I never hear about Obama going to Camp David. Where are the photos of Obama skeet shooting at Camp David?

There's some mystery within that pronoun "we."

"Swartz didn't face prison until feds took over case..."

"The late Internet activist was facing a stern warning from local prosecutors. But then the U.S. Attorney's office, run by Carmen Ortiz, chose to make an example of Aaron Swartz, a new report says."

The report is likely to fuel an online campaign against Ortiz... An online petition asking President Obama to remove from office Ortiz — a politically ambitious prosecutor who was talked about as Massachusetts' next governor as recently as last month.

There's a hot campaign to destroy Ortiz. Note that there's also this other case where she's accused of "bullying" a motel owner, in what she calls "strictly a law-enforcement effort to crack down on what was seen as a pattern of using the motel to further the commission of drug crimes for nearly three decades." Ortiz is considering appealing in that case, and the Boston Herald has the headline: "Ortiz to motel owner: We’re not done yet." It's not like she said we're not done yet.  That's the newspaper's paraphrase of "We are weighing our options with respect to appeal."

Is the prosecutor getting bullied? If she were to commit suicide — Swartz-style — would everyone feel ashamed of what they did to her?

No one cries for a prosecutor.