My cell phone charger died last night. That means I have to race out today and get a new one before my cell phone battery gives out. Or drive around in the car in order to charge it there, much like a reverse version of when I used to take my wailing infant son and place him in the carseat until the movement of the car lulled him to sleep.
So this is my question for all you techies out there: why do cell phone chargers die so early? Continue reading →
Well, this is certainly no surprise.
I’ve never been especially interested in horses, and I almost never watch horse races.
One exception was the 1975 match race between the unbeaten filly Ruffian and that year’s Derby winner Foolish Pleasure. As we watched, Ruffian broke down towards the end of the race, and she ended up being euthanized. Ruffian is buried at Belmont Park facing the finish line.
I didn’t watch yesterday’s Kentucky Derby, but I heard about it and have seen photos. The remarkable filly Eight Belles suffered an unprecedented injury, breaking the condylar bones in both ankles after the race as she circled the track for the cooldown lap. She was euthenized then and there, the only time in the Derby’s long history that a horse has ever died in the race.
There is something almost unbearably poignant and even horrific about this sort of event, even to someone like me who’s ordinarily indifferent to horses. Continue reading →
In a Newsweek interview with George Will and Sean Wilentz that’s mainly about the Left re-evaluating Reagan, there was this food for thought from Will:
What happened in ’72 was the aggressive, conscious, tough, skillful disenfranchising of organized labor and of the big city machines, by George McGovern. McGovern was thought of as a soft prairie farmer. He was one tough cookie, a man who took a nonexistent Democratic Party in South Dakota and produced a senator””that was himself””not many years later. What happened in ’72””that formalized, aggressive takeover of the Democratic Party by one faction at the expense of another””is what we’re seeing playing out right now. It is no accident, comrade, that in ’76 Reagan makes a strong run and in ’80 he makes it into the White House over the remains of the badly divided Democratic Party.
It appears that Hillary’s argument may be correct. Post-Wright, she now seems more electable than Obama.
For all the good it will do her. Will the superdelegates listen?
[ADDENDUM: Great Noemie Emery article in the Weekly Standard on how Hillary is channeling her Inner Republican, to the fury of many Democrats.]
In my continuing quest to bring you the best of the jello molds, here’s a 50s twofer to help you while away those leisure hours spent without the cocktail parties and get-togethers of yesteryear:
It combines two crazes whose decline we mourn: the jello mold and the paint-by-numbers kit. Continue reading →
I know, I know, I should leave the NY Times alone to its dwindling readership and coffers. I should take the pledge to never type in its sorry URL again.
But I’m weak. Every now and then some link catches my eye at another site and the temptation to click is irresistible. And so today at Real Clear Politics I happened on this editorial, stunning in its shamelessness even for the Times.
Here’s the lede: Continue reading →
And nothing disgusting in this one (although, where’s Trigger? Hmmm.)
This excellent Slate article can be summarized as follows: if you look down on people, it’s unlikely that they’ll start looking up to you.
Yesterday was Mayday. But, moving right along, tomorrow is Shutdown Day, the holiday during which we’re advised to take a holiday from our computers, televisions, and other electronic communication gadgetry.
Don’t know if I will. I was about to say “Don’t know if I can“—but of course I can. Most definitely I can. Any time I want, I can turn this sucker off. I just choose not to. Continue reading →
Today is Mayday.
As a child I was confused by the wildly differing associations the word conjures up. It’s a distress signal, for example, apparently derived from the French for “come to my aid.”
That was the first meaning of the word I ever learned, from watching the World War II movies that were so ubiquitous on TV when I was a tiny child. The pilot would yell it into the radio as the fiery plane spiraled down after being hit, or as the stalling engine coughed and sputtered. On the ship the guy in uniform would tap it out in code and repeat it (always three times in a row, as is the convention) when the torpedo hit and the ship filled with water.
But on a far more personal level, it was the time of the May Féªte (boy, does that sound archaic) in my elementary school, when each class had to learn a dance and perform it in the gymnasium in front of the entire student body’s proud/bored parents. Continue reading →
Here’s one response to the Obama/Wright brouhaha that lets you know why Obama may have been so reluctant to throw Wright under the bus. It seems that Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mary Mitchell (who is an African-American woman, a fact I mention because it’s relevant) thinks Wright has been grievously Wronged:
…[T]he notion that white pundits can dictate what constitutes unacceptable speech in the black church is repulsive to most black people…[W]hen Obama says America was “offended” by Wright’s harsh language, he isn’t speaking for or to Black America. He is speaking to White America…I don’t want to see a warrior like Wright denigrated to prove to white voters that Obama is not a radical.
I have no idea where Mitchell gets the notion that white pundits are dictating what is said in black churches. Continue reading →