Open thread 8/26/23
And to go with that, you might want to take a look at Robert Frost’s entertaining poem “Departmental.”
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
And to go with that, you might want to take a look at Robert Frost’s entertaining poem “Departmental.”
But it’s all just random, meaningless natural selection, don’t you know? Nothing to see here, really. It was bound to happen after billions of years of evolution after nothing exploded into the known universe twelve, or was it twenty-seven billion years ago. It’s hard to keep up with the estimates. But it definitely wasn’t God and has nothing to do with creation.
This reminds me of a saying about socialism: Great theory. Wrong species.
Looking at a bunch of commie ants reminds me that I have to apply some more poison on my fire ant beds here in Texas. Little fire ants bite at my feet and ankles and at times leave bites that swell up, an leave a few scars that are still there several years later. I have to keep ants out of the outside unit of my air conditioner where they like to live on the electrical switches for some reason and they can ruin an a/c unit.
Killing fire ants is a never ending process in my yard and they do manage to thrive and continue to be a nuisance. Anyway it was kind of interesting to see the complex stuff ants do however I don’t care to much about them being dedicated commie worker bugs nor do I want to emulate ant behavior, all I want to do is eradicate ant beds since I find new ones every time I mow the grass.
OldTexan, don’t neglect the ‘chiggers’… I find ‘Lilly Miller Sulfur Dust’ (dusted or sprayed) works.
Meanwhile, the ‘beating’ goes on:
https://granitegrok.com/blog/2023/08/is-chris-sununu-pressuring-sec-o-state-david-scanlan-to-block-trump-from-nhs-primary-ballot
cb- when you know you can’t compete, cheat!
Seems to apply to politics as well as women’s sports.
I kinda like the little critters – except for the fire ants. I read somewhere that ants emit more CO2 than all human activities including humans. Is someone able to confirm?
Doctors have time for this? Who knew…
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/08/26/merging-of-public-health-climate-american-medical-association-declared-climate-change-a-public-health-crisis-physicians-urged-to-discuss-climate-change-with-patients/
Xylourgos:
I recall it was termites not ants, but could have been uncles.
cb–
Looks like Watts Up With That has been flooded with requests for that link– I’ve gotten a 429 error message for the past 10 minutes to the effect that WUWT has exceeded its request rate.
As for the topic itself (the wokening of public health), the AMA has moved steadily leftward for years, like a lot of professional associations. It’s hemorrhaged members in recent years. Most of the docs I know don’t pay it no never mind, as my dad would say.
Article on “Biden’s Twisted Idea of Empathy“.
Why does Biden make other people’s tragedies about himself?
There are three plausible reasons as to why President Biden keeps doing this. The first is that he is a narcissist who is genuinely incapable of thinking beyond his own frame of reference. The second is that he’s an amnesiac, whose collection of applicable anecdotes has now narrowed to the vanishing point. And the third is that he believes quite genuinely that this is what empathy looks like, and that there is nobody around him who is willing and able to correct his course. Whatever the cause, it’s a problem. Without any sign of guilt or self-reflection — and egged on by a press that is incapable of honestly holding him to account — the president has taken to playing Bereavement Bingo. When one learns that Biden intends to respond to a tragedy, the question is not if he’ll make the calamity about himself, but in what manner. Before long, one expects Las Vegas will be taking bets.
Here’s an article from 2020 that gave the official version: “How Empathy Defines Joe Biden.
“When is a view not a view?”
Quick Q &A:
1) Is this “analysis” a better attempt than the initial PJ Media “analysis” to discredit the Tucker & Trump interview popularity? It is.
2) Is the attempt to discredit the obvious – more interest in Tucker & Trump interview than Republican debate – a sign of TDS? It is.
3) If Twitter views are so easily manipulated/ misunderstood, why did the DeSantis campaign launch on Twitter not have similar numbers?
PA-Cat — Maybe this’ll work
https://www.climatedepot.com/2023/08/24/merging-of-public-health-climate-american-medical-association-declared-climate-change-a-public-health-crisis-physicians-urged-to-discuss-climate-change-with-patients/
he and obama, ftm, I found remarkably callous and indifferent, illustrated by the ‘take a pill’ exchange, that was implicit in the IPAB ‘death panels’ buried in the stimulus bill,
RDS with a word from his sponsors:
Europe has to step up (with more support for Ukraine).
At which point, his polling dropped a few more points. He looks weak whenever he does the bidding of his RINO neocon benefactors. He has time to adjust and retool for 2028, which he should start doing now.
Ants are automatons, nothing more, nothing less.
that guy:
One can point out the truth, whatever it may be, without being a Trump-hater. And of course DeSantis didn’t have similar numbers for his rollout – he has nowhere near Trump’s support (or, for that matter, nowhere near the numbers of Trump’s haters, who also probably viewed the Trump interview), and it was just the beginning of his campaign. No one is alleging his numbers – or the numbers who watched the Fox News debate the other night – are equal to Trump’s.
Quick Follow-up & Question:
As a follow-up to the Trump v. Obama compare in my ‘The Republican dilemma redux: Don Quixote versus Sancho Panza’ comments – I’ll add:
• 16 of 24 Trump endorsed 2022 Senate candidates won (67%).
• 3 of 6 Obama endorsed 2022 Senate candidates won (50%).
• 1 of 2 Biden endorsed 2022 Senate candidates won (50%).
• Trump’ General Election endorsement success rate is as follows:
2022: 83%
2021: 67%
2020: 78%
2019: 67%
2018: 59%
• Obama’ General Election endorsement success rate is as follows:
2022: 74%
2021: 59%
2020: 40%
2019: 53%
2018: 68%
• Biden’ General Election endorsement success rate is as follows:
2022: 89%
2021: 50%
2020: 29%
2019: 00%
2018: 64%
A key question is: Why are the Democrats not trying to make the same claims about Obama/ Biden & “Obama/ Biden candidates” that Republicans make about Trump? (Trump/ MAGA candidates fail)
Banned Lizard:
Financial support for Ukraine is a pretty popular position among everyone except what I used to call the Buchanan wing of the party (now I suppose I could call it the Tucker Carlson wing). When I last checked, Trump supports giving money to Ukraine too, and he’s always been in favor of more European support for NATO.
And here it is:
In addition, DeSantis picked up support after the debate, according to polls such as this one.
steve:
But it’s all just random, meaningless natural selection, don’t you know?
Oxymoron.
Thanks, Neo, I was going to point out that calling on Europe to pay more for its own defense is congruent with Trump policy pronouncements.
Kate:
Ah, but when Trump says it it’s good, and when DeSantis says it it’s bad.
@ Neo
“In addition, DeSantis picked up support after the debate, according to polls such as this one.”
• Always happy to follow the links you share – including those on Polls.
• Found it interesting that the New York Post would commission a poll after the debate – then not cover the results in their paper (maybe I am not looking in right place).
• In any case, here are headlines based on that poll – and the poll itself.
“New York Post Poll: Trump Leads Biden by 3 Points”
“New York Post Poll – President Trump Surges to 61% National Support, DeSantis Collapse at 9%, No Other Candidate in Double Digits”
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/new-york-post-poll-trump/2023/08/25/id/1132094/
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/20230825_US_Leger.pdf
cb–
Thanks– that second link worked just fine. In the interim, I read a hysterical article about climate change in Maclean’s, a Canadian magazine with a predictable leftist slant. I came across it on Longreads, a site that Gerard recommended from time to time as an aggregator of long-form news articles, short stories, and historical anecdotes. About 90% of the articles linked on Longreads are the usual coming-out-of-the-closet, being trans, having an abortion, and having an attack of the vapors about climate change kind of stuff, but the remaining 10% are genuinely interesting. As for the Maclean’s article, I stopped reading it about 500 words in because it is in Greta Thunberg territory– but I’ll link it here in case you want to see just how far the Great White North has fallen. The article is titled “Canada in the Year 2060,” and can be read at https://macleans.ca/society/environment/canada-in-the-year-2060/?src=longreads
Meanwhile, if my current primary care doc ever tries to lecture me about climate change . . . he’ll find he has a very impatient patient.
If my doctor tried to lecture me about “climate change,” he’d get the same eye roll he’d see if he warned me about having firearms at home.
that guy:
I can find plenty of polls that show the opposite.
For example, this shows DeSantis unchanged.
This shows Republicans think DeSantis won the debate. And this shows DeSantis getting a small bump after the debate. Here’s a NY Post article; it appeared today:
Your poll seems to be very much an outlier.
However, I don’t think much of polls at this point, and I also think Trump will be the nominee.
Neo:
Eric Matheny @ericmmatheny – Aug 20
If Trump supporters were listless vessels awaiting their orders, they’d be the most vaccinated and boosted demographic on the planet, because Trump endorsed the vaccine.
Instead, most Trump supporters disagreed with him and opted not to get the shot.
We think for ourselves.
Storm Nicole @boxersforlife – Aug 20
We also disagreed with his endorsement of Kevin McCarthy, Ronna McDaniel, Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham and others. What a strange “cult” we are in
https://twitter.com/boxersforlife/status/1693406403514302903
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Whether “most” Trump supporters are purebloods or not, suffice to say we are not an ant colony.
DeSantis did not call Trump supporters “listless vessels.” You know that, if you read Neo’s blog with attention.
Banned Lizard:
I never said anything about all Trump supporters thinking alike or being an ant colony.
In fact, I’ve mostly been a Trump supporter.
And I already wrote about the “listless vessel” comment, which was not about all Trump supporters but rather was about certain members of Congress and a warning for people not to act like listless vessels.
trump validates what people already believe, through independent sources,
one can disagree about adopting the vaccine, but have it as an option, I would have picked barnette rather than oz, but there was insistence that he was the only choice,
Thank you for the Frost link! A wonderful poem!
SCOTTtheBADGER:
You’re welcome. I think it’s really a great example of Frost’s ability to write light verse of the Ogden Nash-y variety, as well as all his deeper masterpieces.
@ Neo
“Your poll seems to be very much an outlier.”
• You will get no disagreement from me, in part because I do not have a habit of following the polls – so, not knowledgeable – but do periodically review sites that map trends.
• I’ll add that I am not a “poll person”, because they are often used to manipulate – and that is the first “poll comment” I have made.
• I did so because the link you shared at 4:02 was tied to a survey published by Fox News – a Murdoch company – which also owns the New York Post. And Murdoch is opposed to Trump.
• For me it was not the poll results that were notable, it was the ‘The dog did not bark’ moment that was notable (i.e., did not fit their narrative).
• Lastly, I find the ‘thoughts & analysis & comments’ from sources that write about the “news” published elsewhere very useful because of the ‘An army of Davids’ aspect, and the “triangulation” provided by opposing viewpoints.
Here in Albuquerque I’ve been plagued by small brown and black ants every spring until it gets cold in the fall. Leave the barest crumbs on a countertop at night and it’s an ant nest by morning.
Now those ants are gone. Why? I now notice there is some species of large brown ants in my backyard next to the kitchen door.
My guess is the big ants eat the little ants.
huxley:
And then there’s this.
neo:
That verse was tickling my brain but I couldn’t reel it in. Thanks.
My goodness, De Morgan wrote it! The mathematician/logician who came up with De Morgan’s Theorem and mathematical induction.
Clearly we need more mathematicians like DeMorgan and Lewis Carroll moonlighting as writers.
Not to forget Tom Lehrer.
huxley:
I had a hunch that little verse was somewhere in the mix.
Mathematicians who write poetry – how many are there, I wonder?
I recently heard Laurie Morvan, blues singer & guitarist, perform. It seems she is an electrial engineer and mathematician. I’d guess music is a more common cross-over than poetry.
…music is a more common cross-over than poetry.
TommyJay:
Quite likely.
Math and EE aren’t quite the same as programming, but back in the 80s the link between programming and music was well-known. Employers couldn’t find enough programmers, so they included musicians as candidates.
At New College, my experimental alma mater, I took a course titled “Math for Poets.” I was a poet and I was good at math, so why not?
I turned in a project based on my intuitive feel for some set of mathematical series. The professor was indignant. What I had done had already been done by the Babylonians!
My bad.
I don’t think my professor understood what a poet was.
@ huxley > “but back in the 80s the link between programming and music was well-known”
A lot of the computer & math nerds I knew at college in the early 70s were also musicians, these in particular that I remember: the flautist who did math in binary; the recorder player – who could blow two at the same time!; and the mathematician who built his own harpsichord.
Computer math nerd joke: “The world is composed of 10 kinds of people.”
You might also be interested in this book, which I read some (lots of) years ago:
“Physics for Poets” by Robert H. March
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/928758.Physics_for_Poets
“The world is composed of 10 kinds of people.”
AesopFan:
But what are the other 8? 🙂
Re: French
Speaking is the big hurdle now. I’ve been stood up three consecutive times for tutoring. I think I’ve got it ironed out with a guy in Paris. We’ll see.
The French have a marvelous idiom for being “stood up”:
______________________________
Je me suis fait poser un lapin à le rendez-vous.
I am made to pose a rabbit at the meeting.
______________________________
Yeah, that’s the feeling!
I just ran across a web site called “WTF Happened in 1971?” (https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/).
Lots and lots of graphs.
Many of Neo’s readers will remember that time. The site provides graphs, but causation inferences are left to the reader. Any thoughts?
huxley, being like a rabbit might mean sitting frozen and waiting for something to happen. I see rabbits do that; they sit, unmoving, until something alarms them, and then they move away.
While the Southern California tropical storm was underway, my Thai sister-in-law remarked that it had been raining cats and dogs all day, and that she had never heard the phrase before, and asked what it means. It is, on its face, nonsensical, and I looked it up and found no good explanations.
@ Cornflour
“Any thoughts?”
• Thank you for sharing – interesting site.
• On a macro economic level my obvious “1.a” guess is Energy. My “1.b” guess is Technology, especially the rise of main frame computers in the work place. How business is done today – the scale, complexity & efficiency – would not be possible without computers.
• On a macro social level my guess is Marketing, especially the marketing of material affluence/ envy – and what does “success & happiness” look like. Along with the persistent and deep penetration of marketing to all ages & locations.
• Again, thank you for sharing.
Former USN intelligence officer J. E. Dyer on the GOP debate and what wasn’t said:
https://theoptimisticconservative.wordpress.com/2023/08/25/the-debate-to-nowhere/
Cornflour: very interesting series of graphs. Here’s one signal event from 1971:
“With inflation unresolved by August 1971, and an election year looming, Nixon convened a summit of his economic advisers at Camp David. He then announced temporary wage and price controls, allowed the dollar to float against other currencies, and ended the convertibility of the dollar into gold. Nixon’s monetary policies effectively took the United States off the gold standard and brought an end to the Bretton Woods system, a post-war international fixed exchange-rate system.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_Richard_Nixon#Economy)
Nixon announced the changes on August 15, 1971:
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-the-nation-outlining-new-economic-policy-the-challenge-peace
That may be the day that MKent was referring to in an earlier thread.
Saturday (Sunday) Open Thread Russo-Ukraine war, dead men walking:
The Death of Prigozhin -The crash & its implications for Wagner, Africa, Ukraine & Russia _Perun
Timestamps:
00:00 — The Death Of Prigozhin
01:34 — What Am I Talking About?
03:56 — Background
12:58 — What Do We Know?
23:09 — Causes & Responsibility
32:40 — What Does This Mean: Ukraine & NATO
34:24 — What Does This Mean: Africa And Overseas Operations
43:26 — What Does This Mean: Wagner Group
47:24 — What Does This Mean: Russia
52:06 — Winners And Losers?
56:28 — Conclusion
57:15 — Channel Update
Saturday/Sunday Open Thread – Russo/Ukraine War, Tucker and MacGreagor fact check:
Fact Checking the Tucker Carlson – Col MacGregor Interview of August 21st – Ryan McBeth
Sources are listed in the “more” section.
Tucker club may want to watch and think a bit. The MacGreagor fan club may want to start thinking.
@ huxley > “But what are the other 8? ?”
Darned if I know! Probably something intersectional.
For the non-computer-geeks, “10” in this joke is read “one-zero”; and this is the clue – “the flautist who did math in binary.”
Sometimes I really miss Professor Lehrer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6OaYPVueW4
Tom Lehrer: New Math (concert live) (1965)
AesopFan and huxley,
I believe the joke goes; “There are 10 kinds of people, those who understand binary and those who do not.”
@ huxley & Kate — idioms are my favorite part of learning other languages (or at least skimming through lexicons and dictionaries).
I wish that translators would render them literally, rather than substituting an English “equivalent” because the forms idioms take are a real window into culture.
(Wikipedia) Some are obvious, like “raining as if poured from a bucket” and many similar variants, and the somewhat laconic “the doors of the sky have opened” or “the sky is torn.”
Surprisingly there are quite a few languages where it rains different animals (frogs, toads, snakes, lizards, jackals, dogs, kittens, old women, and shoemakers’ apprentices) and things (wheelbarrows, boats and barrels, halberds, nails, rope, chair legs, strings). Looks like the humorous hyperbole is popular, probably because it’s impossible to have any of those coming from the sky, THAT’S how bad the rain is. If you’ve ever been hit by a really hard, driving rain, it does hurt, like being pounded by something more solid than water. Some of those may also be descriptive of the “string” or “rod” look that is common with really hard driving rain.
The Welsh couldn’t settle for just one, and have this combination:
mae hi’n bwrw hen wragedd a ffyn = raining old ladies and sticks.
Among some more colorful versions of bodily-function-related precipitation, including those attributing rain to deity, I’ll go with: “God is crying.”
Makes me think of the old rhyme: It’s raining, it’s pouring, the old man is snoring; went to bed and bumped his head and couldn’t get up in the morning.
I like this saying, among several that are listed for France:
il pleut à boire debout = raining enough to drink standing
Who, as a child, hasn’t stood outside in the rain with their mouth open?
Thanks for sharing your language progress!
@ Rufus > I saw a similar type of “in joke” on a tshirt:
“There are two kinds of people: those who can extrapolate from insufficient information.”
Took me a couple of mind-blinks to finish the sentence.
the translation programs like babelfish are the worse, they don’t capture the nuance of the language,
Here is a computer story from 1980 when I went to work in the IUS Systems Integration Lab:
Act I “Gymnopédies” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u20FQjcVVj0
My First Encounter with Flying By
The SIL (“sill”) looked like the set of a sci fi movie. It was a large room about 100 feet by 140 feet with the ceiling about 50 feet above the floor. In the middle sat two test articles of the spacecraft’s avionics set ups with their star seekers, flight computers, batteries, and such. These were connected to development systems for testing the flight and support software. Nearby, several sets of equipment were being developed that made up the check-out stations that would be used to preflight the spacecraft at the Cape and Vandenberg. There was a large multi-story test chamber in the corner. Lastly was the equipment that I was responsible for: two PDP-10 mainframes, DECsystem-10 model 1091s.
If you look up PDP-10 in Wikipedia you see a 1977 map of the proto-internet, the ARPANET. You will notice all the PDP-10s (and PDP-11s) that make up the ARPANET. The internet was largely invented on the PDP-10 and I had two of them to tend.
I had only ever seen mainframe computers in person once before. One Saturday, when I was about 15 or so my father had to go into work for some reason I don’t remember, and he took me with him to show me their new mainframes. They were Honeywell Series 6000s. Six of them. They were part of the World Wide Military Command and Control System (WWMCCS). They were in the underground command post at Strategic Air Command Headquarters in Nebraska.
Seeing those first mainframes is what started me down the path of computing. When I was about 16, I had permission to use another WWMCCS computer that was in Virginia. I learned Basic by reading the manual and writing a Star Trek game (naturally). I charged my computer runtime to the Information Directorate of the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I only used that computer from a dial-up terminal with an acoustic coupler. I never actually saw the machine. When I was 17, I got to play with the Fairfax County School District’s IBM 360. On that occasion I learned both COBOL and FORTRAN by reading the manuals. I never saw that computer either as my access was by Remote Job Entry (RJE) card reader and printer only.
Lastly, I had used a CDC 6400 mainframe at the University of Washington. I never saw that one either. The only programming class I ever had to this point was an algorithms class. My access was strictly via RJE. My instructor told me I was the first person to finish the class using less than half of their allocated computer budget and that was good. On the other hand, my programs were about half the length of everyone else’s and way too obscure and that was not so good.
The IUS program was ramping up and I was the new guy, so I got the brand-new night shift. During the day there were maybe 15 to 20 people working in the SIL at any one time. On the evening shift, half that. On the night shift, just me. Sunday nights were the worst because my shift was the first of the week. The lab was deserted and dark when I would arrive at midnight. I entered the plant through a photo gate and was buzzed in by the guards normally without seeing them. On those times, I never saw another soul until the dayshift came on. On one occasion, when the guards didn’t buzz me in after I rang several times, I had to drive over to the main gate to ask why they didn’t answer. They apologized; they hadn’t noticed me. I could see over their shoulders that they were watching ‘The Lawrence Welk Show’ on TV.
Other days weren’t as bad as there were people in the lab when I got there. Occasionally though, people with lab time in the evenings turned off the lights when they left not realizing that I was there. That was annoying because the lights had to cool down for 20 minutes or so before they would turn back on. So sometimes I was not only alone but also in the dark. The lab was very cold and very noisy. Air-cooled mainframes were loud enough but the roar of the air conditioners was even louder. The high-speed drum printer sounded like a machinegun with up to 132 hammers striking the drum 15 times per second. It was so loud that the phone had a large external cartoon looking bell that stuck to the side of the steel WWII army desk with big magnets.
All the adjacent labs were deserted at night. There were no other people around anywhere. I ate lunch out of the vending machines. It was like the sole survivor in some ‘Twilight Zone’ episode. This feeling was exacerbated by being surrounded by so much exotic paraphernalia both in my lab and the adjacent ones. Equipment, the purpose of which I did not know. It was at this time, in the middle of the night, totally alone, with nothing to do, I discovered Zork (“You are in a maze of twisty passages all alike” … the first version of Zork was written between 1977 and 1979 on a PDP-10 at MIT).
Not much went on in the middle of the night. There were a couple of TRW people down in Sunnyvale using one system that created tapes and prints for the dayshift starting at maybe 5 AM. The other system however, had only a single night-time user. A woman with the curious name Flying By. She would log on about 2-3 AM and work all night editing and compiling. I wondered about her curious (real) name and why she worked in the middle of the night. All access was via dialup lines, so I had no idea where in the country she even was. I finally asked the dayshift who she was. I found out that she was an expert from Goddard back east and she worked at night because she had the system to herself. I was also told she was kind of demanding and a bit of a PITA. If she needed something, I should attend to her right away but otherwise not to bother her. For some reason I got the picture in my mind of a chain smoking, gravel voiced, middle-aged, Plain-Jane spinster type.
Outside of the SIL was a lobby with a vestibule and counter for a receptionist. The receptionist, who was only there during the day, sat instead at an ordinary office desk on the other side of the lobby. Next to her were about six chairs and a couple of those three-foot-tall, eight-inch diameter or so cylindrical ash trays. The kind you pushed a button on top to cause the ash tray to dump in the can. They were ubiquitous in those days. The SIL was no smoking so there was a smoking area in the lobby. Since the counter was unused, we would put printouts and tapes on it for pickup to limit traffic in the lab. The lab wasn’t exactly a clean room, but you did have to walk across a sticky pad on the way in. One morning as I exited the lab into the lobby, I saw this mid-20s something woman picking up her printouts. She was wearing aviator glasses held together with a paper clip. She was pretty, in a young Holly Hunter sort of way. She smiled at me with a slightly crooked smile and turned and walked out. My heart caught in my throat. I only saw her for 2 or 3 seconds and my heart caught in my throat. I asked the person I was with who that was. Flying By was the answer.
I was really surprised as she looked nothing like I had imagined and was younger than I expected. I also was really surprised at the strange reaction that I had on seeing her. For the next couple of months, I simply wanted to see her again, hopefully for more than 3 seconds. Maybe even talk to her. I saw her name on the system every night, but she didn’t print things all that often and when she did, Marco, one of the guys she worked with, would pick up her listings when he came in the morning. I was frustrated. Finally, one morning I got a call. It was Flying By. She wanted to get a printout right away. I actually spoke to her. I was very excited. She was coming over herself. I was waiting in the lobby with her listings in hand, when at last the door opened and in walked … Marco. The disappointment must have been plastered all over my face because Marco commented on it. I never saw her again while I worked nights.
That spring Mt St. Helens erupted. We could see the ash plume from the roof. Facilities gave us enormous rolls of purple plastic sheeting to cover the computers just in case. They hung on the walls like 10-foot-long paper towel rolls. I was told that Facilities would sound the air-raid sirens in the event of ash fall.
By summer I was no longer the new guy and moved to the evening shift. There I had things to do and I over time became THE company expert on the DECsystem-10. My workday was nearly 12-hours opposite hers and I no longer saw Flying By’s name every night and I wasn’t reminded of her anymore.
Except for one thing.
One of the new guys in the flight software group had the same last name as Flying By and the same first name and middle initial as me. I thought how curious. I was informed that he was her younger brother who had come up to join the program. I saw him from time to time as he sometimes worked in the SIL and had lab time in the evenings. But not his sister. I never saw her when I worked evenings.
[End Act I]
an interesting offering from zach snyder
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlKrGesYPkQ&t=199s
ah this is curious
https://twitter.com/GLNoronha/status/1695929719127200181
I wish that translators would render them literally, rather than substituting an English “equivalent” because the forms idioms take are a real window into culture.
AesopFan:
Amen. Exactly. I too am happy for such glimpses into another culture.
Plus this seems like the thin edge of the wedge for the translator to rewrite the original. I’ve come to regard translators as much of wannabe writers as critics.
For instance, just yesterday working on Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises” in French I ran into this sad business:
Hemingway’s friend, Robert Cohn, is complaining how he can’t go to South America, because he would have take his wife with him, and his wife wouldn’t want to go.
Hemingway’s character responds, “Tell her to go to hell.” The translation:
_________________________
Envoie-la faire foutre.
[Send her to make to fuck.]
Fuck her.
_________________________
OK. The English and the French get the point of rejection across, but how is the sexual obscenity required? “Faire foutre” in French, as I understand it, is a serious insult, well beyond Hemingway’s “to hell with her” and in a different realm of metaphor.
Not only that, Hemingway intentionally avoided obscenity in his writing. He resorted to dashes the reader could fill in or dodges like “I obscenity into thy milk” (“For Whom the Bell Tolls”).
Obscenity translators!
@ Hubert > thanks for the link to Dyer’s post. I always check her site on Sundays, because she doesn’t write often, but everything she does is so good, and usually focuses on an angle no one else is looking at.
A Democrat Party Revolution, intended to overthrow the US Constitution in every functional way. One-Party State. So says Mark Levin, calmly enough yet clearly feeling my pain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrdB6nRv7ZY
To lighten the mood here, here is a collection of some really funny signs, many of which I’ve not seen before.*
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzyP6bA1l0E
@ Snow – thanks, some of those were hilarious!
Chases Eagles,
Interesting story, looking forward to Act II!
“…ah…curious…”
The “leak” would seem to indicate that this whole “suspension” thang is merely more “Biden”-esque theater…
(…since it should be absolutely clear that “Biden” is out-and-out allied to the Mullahs…and ALWAYS has been….i.e., since 2009; and but-of-course the magisterially malicious Malley has landed on his feet…in Princeton(!)…)
Related:
“Iran’s Religious Influence Spreading throughout the United States”—
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19922/iran-religious-influence-us
(…So…should one wonder why this is the case…?)
File under: Gosh, HOW did THAT ever happen…?
A “banned from Twitter in 2021” (A badge of honor/critical thinking to me ) MD/PhD responds to a piece of propaganda (from the sounds of it) posted on the JAMA Network Open site, which I suspect is going to be uncritically sited by many a MSM piece to come.
Because Truth is More Important than the Narrative: 10 ways the JAMA Network Open Article Accusing Physicians of Spreading Misinformation is Wrong
And why the “misinformation” label is antithetical to the scientific process
TRACY BETH HØEG, MD, PHD
AUG 26, 2023
https://tracybethhegmdphd.substack.com/p/because-truth-is-more-important-than?r=abaxo&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
She begins:
The JAMA NO paper’s purpose was to identify & describe (or perhaps more accurately target) physicians who the authors claimed spread “misinformation” about COVID-19.
The main problem was that the authors themselves did not actually do their research or due diligence in an attempt to to distinguish truth from falsehoods. What they did instead was refer to the CDC and “the existing state of scientific evidence” (which, as you will see, is apparently quite far from the actual truth in most instances). The authors stated:
“We defined COVID-19 misinformation as assertions unsupported by or contradicting US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidance on COVID-19 prevention and treatment during the period assessed or contradicting the existing state of scientific evidence for any topics not covered by the CDC”
——
To be clear (as I suspect every reader here already knows) science, perhaps most especially “medical science” is NOT a matter of voting, or even consensus. I could spend all day documenting the incorrect “consensus” from the past four and a half decades. Things PROVEN incorrect. Often damaging.
It has been well documented how badly biased by funding sources and consulting appointments, if not corrupted, many CDC and FDA employees, and most of the FDA advisors, are.
AesopFan: you’re welcome. Dyer can be hard to follow but she’s always worth reading. I think her post on the debate (or “debate”) is spot-on. Especially this: “We’re watching the deck being stacked against a defendant, live and in color, and there doesn’t seem to be anything to do about it.”
ChasesEagles: fascinating story. Reads like the background for a Richard Powers novel. Waiting for the next installment.
ah princeton, once it hosted the likes of the great bernard lewis, and michael doran, it subsequently hosted mousavian, who had admitted to deceiving the western negotiators,
Indeed, guilty until proven guilty (and—bonus!—you don’t even have to prove it!)
It’s the new normal, where “enemies of the people” (AKA over half the country…unless they cave for a plea bargain…and, no, not all of us are heroes) are concerned.
That’s right: America TRANSFORMED!
mission accomplished
https://nypost.com/2023/08/28/dylan-mulvaney-wins-breakout-creator-at-streamy-awards-calls-out-transphobia-and-hate-during-speech/
huxley, that reminds me of one Doonesbury cartoon one time that used the elocution “”. In context, if I could remember it, it was funnier.