२७ जानेवारी, २०१४
At the China Dog Café...
... the internet is hinky this morning, at least from my frozen outlet. The -8 temperature might be icing it over, wrecking my flow. It's one of those days when I realize that I may have a successful blog, but somebody along the line gave me some help... Somebody helped to create this unbelievable World Wide Web system that has allowed me to thrive. Somebody invested in this series of tubes. I've got a blog, I didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen.
And you, the reader, can make this post happen, by commenting here, perhaps from a less frozen outpost. From my iced-in place, I invite you to keep up the flow.
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Tim Berners-Lee is responsible for the web. Jack Frost is responsible for messing it up.
Leftism is fundamentally tribalist.
Rightism is fundamentally humanist.
That's my conjecture for now.
Global warming. Embrace it, pray for it.
Missed the Grammys last night. Watched new "Girls" episode, "Dead Inside". Hannah's self-absorption is further revealed when her e-book editor dies unexpectedly. Adam, who thought Hannah was superior to his bushy sister, may be starting to see similarities. The show continues to pleasantly surprise me.
Ms. Althouse, you misrepresented Mr. Huckabee's quote in your other post. Multiple commenters have pointed it out.
300+ comments later, no response from you, neither in defense nor contrition.
Why? Are you embarrassed?
I expect more from a pedagogue.
Or should I reclassify you as a demagogue?
Frankly, I am disappointed.
I am a wuss. Below zero is way to cold for me. I offer some fun slang phrases from the 1920's
Tim Berners-Lee is responsible for the web. Jack Frost is responsible for messing it up.
Jack Frost is responsible for a lot of great music, but it's hard to watch a frozen river flow.
Hah. We may have the worst state government in the US here in California but it's going to be sunny and 74 today. My uploads and downloads are flowing smoothly through the blood-warm intertubes. Eat your hearts out, The Rest of America.
@Livermoron I haven't kept up with the comments in that thread.
The post isn't about Huckabee primarily and is about the way Gregory presented the quote to Rand Paul. At the end of the post there is discussion of what I thought Huckabee meant to say.
I might do another post about Huckabee, but I was trying to keep the Huckabee material encapsulated as used (or misused) by Gregory.
I'm not embarrassed about anything. Are you?
Here in sunny Charlottesville, VA where the weather has finally peeked over 50 - tomorrow we start the plunge back into the teens, we thank you for sending us more cold. :-((
Anyway, fun to read the Supremes slapped down the Administration on Friday by suspending the birth-control mandate. No dissent either. BUT NOW THAT WSJ ARTICLE HAS BEEN ERASED???
I'm embarrassed about lots of things. I was voted "most likely to be embarrassed" by my high-school colleagues. That's embarrassing right there.
@Livermore Why don't you state -- as concisely as you can -- exactly what the problem with respect to the Huckabee quote is?
Referring to "multiple" things elsewhere, relying on the false belief that I'm reading all the comments, you seem to think sheer numbers of comments work to reach my head. Often the opposite is true. A post that's way up over 200 comments is daunting for someone who wasn't following the conversation all along, especially if you go in at the end and see stuff like accusations that I am avoiding answering some question asked earlier!
How about if you make it clear exactly what the problem is? In writing a blog post, I can't follow ever side detour. Present the question straightforwardly and I might try to answer it.
Instead you start insulting me, calling me names.
That's extremely off-putting.
"I'm embarrassed about lots of things. I was voted "most likely to be embarrassed" by my high-school colleagues. That's embarrassing right there."
When I was a child, I was over-concerned with avoiding embarrassment. It's important for kids not to find out about embarrassment early, so they can try lots of things and fail a lot -- like walking and speaking -- without losing confidence.
Fear of embarrassment is a terrible limitation for some people. Others are embarrassed by nothing, which is also a problem.
Apparently the German central bank (Deutsche Bundesbank) is recommending wealth confiscation to fiscally distressed EU member states in the form of a "one-off capital levy".
This ridiculously cold weather does have a positive - Lake Superior is frozen over enough to allow for a hike to the iced Apostle Island sea caves. We're headed up there next weekend for some exploring.
The argument is about "Huckabe says X" vs. "Huckabe says the Democrats say X."
I kind of love that Ezra Klein launched his new venture to a deafening chorus of indifference and "never heard of you.
9 degrees here in Oakland County Michigan.
Sun is out, but the wind is blowing quite hard.
The internet was tens and hundreds of thousands of people all adding a little here and a little there, each trying to make a buck or make a living by adding value.
And the winning and sustainable ideas prevailed.
Exactly opposite of what the left thinks should happen to solve problems.
The left keeps saying "Government is what we do when we do things together."
So what. So is corporate America, and in a far greater order of magnitude, and far more cost effective measure of success than government.
One of those mutts has a busted paw. Poor pup.
Babies are socialists.
Toddlers are libertarians.
Everyone else is somewhere in between those two levels of maturity.
In local news, they're hunting in packs now.
http://tinyurl.com/n4w65lh
So glad there is school today in Madison, where drifted roads aren't an issue.
Yet my facebook feed is full of Mothers' outrage! It's sooo cold! And my unwritten reply is that if you think it's too cold for your kid to get to school, then keep them home. That simple. But other kids might be able to make it in and learn something. Is that wrong?
Below zero and blowing was when my Dad would drive me to school (that *never* happened in central PA that I recall). Dad got a drive to school in Iowa, back in the 30s, if it was colder than -25 (!).
the German central bank (Deutsche Bundesbank) is recommending wealth confiscation to fiscally distressed EU member states in the form of a "one-off capital levy".
I can see why Germany would want this. Having the Greek Govt take money from wealthy Greeks beats (from the German point of view) taking money from all Germans, doesn't it?
I like the idea of "when the Internet freezes over" as a slightly less unlikely (although still very unlikely) event than the corresponding temperature plunge in an infernal region.
Ms. Althouse, apparently I struck a nerve.
Good. It gets the juices flowing.
The first few comments in that thread pointed out your error. Are you telling me that you do not even read the first few comments after you post?
One can learn from being embarrassed. I have plenty of experience in that.
I didn't call you any names other than pedagogue. I wondered out-loud if you were becoming more of a demagogue. Your response to me reinforces my concern.
Here is the concise problem:
You stated: "First, Gregory started the interview with Mike Huckabee's gift to the Democrats, the statement that birth control coverage implies that women "cannot control their libido"
You state that as if it is Huckabee's opinion...that women cannot control their libidos.
Whereas he was stating that, in his view, that is what the Democrats are communicating with their stand on publicly funding women's birth control. He is stating that he himself believes women are better than that.
Seems pretty clear.
IMO, that only becomes a "gift to the Democrats" if it gets twisted to mean what you imply.
Thanks for the responses.
"The argument is about "Huckabe says X" vs. "Huckabe says the Democrats say X.""
I think the post puts that very concisely. Anything beyond that seems like a big old side issue could be a separate post but would not belong in that post.
Commenters, I'm guessing, thought the post was close enough to the subject matter of that other post I never wrote, and took advantage of the existing thread to try to air out the unexplored issues, then lapsed into outrage that I didn't appear in the comments and deal with those things.
If it's anything more than that, tell me. Be brief and, if you want a response, be respectful.
"Ms. Althouse, apparently I struck a nerve.
Good. It gets the juices flowing…."
That's disrespectful, so I didn't keep reading.
Try again.
I recommend that you look very hard at the words "the statement that birth control coverage implies that women 'cannot control their libido,'" especially "coverage implies." Think about it until you see why the criticism of me is wrong.
Then bow down to the Queen of Concision.
One problem with the "you didn't build that argument" -- and one way it ties into the progressive movement's ugly intellectual origins -- is that assigning virtue to a culture over an individual implicitly supports the idea of comparison between cultures. One culture builds things; another culture doesn't. "You didn't build that" may sound like a communitarian vision, but it supports a supremacist one.
Progressives fail to understand that assigning responsibility to individuals is a profoundly ethical viewpoint. Whether the responsibility is blame or accolades, individualism bounds it to specific people, personalities, and endeavors. Furthermore, by bounding responsibility to the individual, the culture is seen as context, not as carrier.
NYC was quite balmy this morning, mid-30s walking across the Br'n Bridge. Too bad it won't stay that way.
More interesting than the weather is the theme of embarrassment, premiered above by BobE. Jonah Goldberg was riffing on the same theme from a different angle. Goldberg goes on about fremdschamen, i.e., feeling embarrassed for someone else because he doesn't realize he should be embarrassed. Only the Germans could have come up with s single word for such a wonderful way to feel superior to the pathetic untermensch who don't know enough to be embarrassed every time they peer into the mirror.
"fremdschamen"
I think the English translation of this word is "Larry David."
Perhaps, but my first impression was like Livermoron's, that you made an imprecise statement about Huckabee's statement, before taking off on your own tangent.
Huckabee babbles, and I am not that interested, so I let it pass, but I do think you sometimes do this sort of thing; it is not the first time.
And I do not bow down for anybody.
But let us accept the "you didn't build that" world view.
When the ACA employer mandates land and drive small businesses to reduce their workforce, I want to hear the President and Senator Warren proclaim, "There is nobody in this country who went bust on his own. Nobody. You fired workers that people like me made too expensive to employ. You saw the capital sucked out of your company because of laws that we passed over your objections. You decided you couldn't afford to be self-employed because we made health care unaffordable for the self-employed. Now look, you built a factory and we made it fail. Tough shit. Part of the underlying social contract is that when we drive you out of business it's your fault."
Ms. Althouse wrote:
That's disrespectful, so I didn't keep reading.
Is that why you didn't read the other thread's comments?
Your other response is...non-responsive.
Clearly you are avoiding a substantive discussion on your concision.
Can't say I blame you.
Ms. Althouse wrote:
Then bow down to the Queen of Concision.
My, how respectful. And humble, too.
"Perhaps, but my first impression was like Livermoron's, that you made an imprecise statement about Huckabee's statement, before taking off on your own tangent."
Your first impression wasn't good enough to support the criticism. My statement was NOT imprecise. It was very precise, and you are not showing appreciation for brevity. Instead you are relying on your failure to read it right and calling me imprecise. The imprecision is in your reading, and I can't believe you are continuing to insist on seeing it your way if you understand that your way is the WRONG way. To concede "maybe" is absurd.
I saved my readers time, and a few of them are paying me back by wasting my time.
Either show comprehension and speak respectfully, as I have spoken to you, or you'll get nothing more from me.
I am trying to model civility, clarity, brevity, and humor, and the readers I want are the ones who like that. If you don't want to try for that ideal, then this blog is not for you.
Queen of Concision or Queen of Conflation:
"The Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government, then so be it."
definition of "or" (from google) says "conjunction: or -- 1. used to link alternatives."
The language does not say what you say it say. Expanded:
"they cannot control their libido without the help of the government intervention, OR they cannot control their reproductive system without the help of the government intervention" - two separate and independent alternatives that Democrats assume to justify government intervention.
cont: "Kids will be kids, teenagers will be teenagers, girls will be girls -- we have to be real about this and base our actions on what we know to the truth."
That's why we need to pass out condoms in high schools, crack pipes in SF, and birth control in O'Care.
Are Republican women to be allowed to speak on "women's issues?"
Eppur si muove
Oh, goodie -- it's "you didn't build that" day.
http://janetheactuary.blogspot.com/2014/01/private-property-tina-and-you-didnt.html
@Unknown You're failing to account for the negative in "cannot."
If I say that you cannot play tennis or basketball, I am saying that you can play neither tennis nor basketball.
Can't be the weather precisely. Electrons speed up when it gets colder. True fact.
Fine:
"The Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control because they CAN control NEITHER their libido or NOR their reproductive system without the help of the government, then so be it."
This does not make your original case very well. However, I would like to add that
(1) I don't consider it fair game to parse a transcript from a verbal reply during an interview as a written statement.
(2) It is clear form context that the criticism is for Democratic linking government birth control (whatever happened to government cheese?) stating, implying, or based on the inability of females to provide themselves controls on libido and reproduction.
(3) In the absence of exercise in libido (in the colloquial sense of the word) reproductive control is not necessary. There is a link.
This sort of thing is why I wrote my "Who does the writer write for?" post several months back.
One last from the unknown poster:
I'm not choosing to be unknown to remain unknown, I just haven't figured the system out. It appears that putting a name to the post links the thread to my email, and I get enough email without being informed every time one of the large volume of commenters has thrown another rock in the pond.
Although maybe this thread will not implode. Explode?
Unknown, FWIW, I have been posting with a link to my email for many months now, and I've never received any email. Maybe that says something about the quality of my posts.
Then again, I rarely check that email account, too. And I don't trust Google at all.
It's too cold to bike on daily errands -- well it could be done but dressing for it is unpleasantly tedious and your glasses always fog up -- and I hate using the car, so I'm out of bananas as of yesterday.
Amazon prime bananas would be a possibility.
Hmm...check that...I'm not sure the user can discover my email that way. Not easily, anyway. It's not exactly Pentagon-level security, but I think you can safely put a handy name in without much fear of abuse.
rhhardin, Amazon bananas would make perfect sense! They're plucked green anyway, from all over the world, and shipped before they're ripe, and they don't need refrigeration.
I don't see retail, fresh bananas on Amazon, though. Probably soon.
By the way, I watch carbs very closely, and a few years ago I googled "banana carbs" and got a ridiculous result like 37g. Reality is more like 20g. The Nutrition Interweb is still confused on the question of peeled v. unpeeled bananas, and misinformation like this spreads too easily.
Uh, if you're still reading, I mean that the original result I got on carbs in bananas was, in fact, specifying "unpeeled" bananas. As though we're all chimpanzees.
Just got in from a round of golf this morning. A nice 70 degree SoCal day, but in some strange way I kind of miss shoveling snow and freezing my butt off.
Not really.
Ever notice that anytime there is an article/blog post that relates to how cold it is, inevitably there will be multiple comments that go something like this: "Global warming!"..."Where's Al Gore?".
Mocking the global warmists that claim any weather that deviates from room temperature is "Global Warming! Serious, you guys!". I get it.
It's pointless, tiresome, and adds nothing to the conversation. A lot like this comment. See my point?
I wouldn't mind finding fine banana flakes that used to be made for putting on hot cereal.
I loved it as a kid.
It came in a regular sized tin can with a pop-out pop-in lid.
I remember a Wisconsin girl I met in the AF who got me to start mixing my eggs and hash browns together before eating them. I always wondered if that really was a thing there in Wisconsin?
I still do it to this day.
When the facts don't matter, the only thing left to do is mock.
1. Birth control coverage implies that women cannot control their libido.
2. Women cannot control their libido.
Is one of those statements supposed to be stupider than the other? Seems like a tie to me.
Ann Althouse said...
I saved my readers time, and a few of them are paying me back by wasting my time.
You can get even by doing a Bloggingheads on the issue.
heyboom said...
I remember a Wisconsin girl I met in the AF who got me to start mixing my eggs and hash browns together before eating them. I always wondered if that really was a thing there in Wisconsin?
I still do it to this day.
That's the ticket-at least for me, here in Michigan. That is, if you've got the right yokes. Deep, rich, flavorful brown farm eggs. Bright yellow, watery, flavorless store bought eggs? Might as well bust out the ketchup.
When I was in the USAF, I met a girl from Indiana. We went out for seafood.
Boy, it's a long, cold winter already...
If it's anything more than that, tell me. Be brief and, if you want a response, be respectful.
Bow low while facing her.Women may curtsy. When you leave the room never turn your back to her. Bow while walking backwards toward the door. You may refer to her as ,"Your highness".
When I was in the USAF, I met a girl from Indiana. We went out for seafood.
Boy, it's a long, cold winter already...
Global Warming! Where's Al Gore?
Sorry, couldn't resist. Spent 4 years in the Upper Peninsula...beautiful country but dang those winters were harsh!
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