Althouse: Late afternoon, October 8th...

October 8, 2014

Late afternoon, October 8th...

... Picnic Point.

Talk about whatever you like.

30 comments:

Anonymous said...: Is that man going over there to eat that dog?; 10/8/14, 8:34 PM
jacksonjay said...: I just read about minimum wage increase advocate, Smarter Lil Lena being shamed into paying the hired help. Lil Lena was not gonna pay them a cent until Gawker called her out! Gotta say, Lena must be smarter than I thought.; 10/8/14, 8:44 PM
Bob R said...: Great pic. Did you get to see the eclipse in Madison? We had a good view here in Blacksburg. Clear until it hit the clouds on the horizon. I don't have a good enough camera setup to make it worthwhile to take a pic when so many other people are going to do a better job. I just stood in the middle of the road in the dark with a hot cup of coffee and watched.; 10/8/14, 9:05 PM
sojerofgod said...: No, we can't talk about that.; 10/8/14, 9:11 PM
sojerofgod said...: How about this:

Are we spirits clothed in flesh, or are we flesh that aspires to become a spirit; Is this a spirituality that doesn't exist?
Why would we long for something so desperately that we are willing to kill for it. Often we murder one another to curry favor with an all-encompassing spirit?
It appears to be something present even in the non-religious or A-theist. Everyone wants to believe in SOMETHING. Even the cynic believes in his cynicism.
turtology believes in Turtles all the way down.
It' always something.; 10/8/14, 9:19 PM
madAsHell said...: Here in the Soviet of Seattle, our regional trauma center just volunteered to treat Ebola patients from other parts of the.....world/country?

Judging by recent comments from the public health community, I'm pretty sure that we are going to learn a lot about the transmission of Ebola.

What could go wrong?; 10/8/14, 9:26 PM
sojerofgod said...: Gee I sure wish I could edit posts.

My fingers are fat, like my middle.
When on the keyboard I diddle,
I sometimes mis-stroke,
the readers then choke,
and think what I'm writing is piddle.; 10/8/14, 9:27 PM
madAsHell said...: Can we talk about, er, women things?

Sure, but that's going to cut into my down time.; 10/8/14, 9:30 PM
sojerofgod said...: 90% of the people who get Ebola die from it. In Spain they riot because a victim's dog was put down due to it being a potential carrier of infection.
People have gone mad. They have been raised believing the lies of the media and government about living in a world with out want, pestilence and death. Unless we are really lucky, or the Lord spares us -I can't think of why he should-
A hell of a lot of people are fixing to die. Ebola stays viable on environmental surfaces (think shopping carts and doorknobs) for several hours. How many people this winter will think they just caught cold? That is until blood runs out their mouth, among other places.

Pray hard.

this business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we will be lucky to live through it. Admiral Josh Paint, The hunt for Red October.; 10/8/14, 9:51 PM
sojerofgod said...: Painter. Danggit I know I typed those letters!

Really!; 10/8/14, 9:53 PM
madAsHell said...: Obama's legacy will be ebola, and a broken health care web site.; 10/8/14, 10:31 PM
Biff said...: Clay Shirky's recent article, "Why I Just Asked My Students To Put Their Laptops Away," seems to have made a splash among the academics in my circle.

(With mild trepidation, I realize that our host has discussed the topic on more than one occasion and that she already was sick of the issue of computers in the university classroom at least eight years ago.)

If the clumsiness of some of Shirky's prose translates to his classroom teaching, I can understand why he might wish to ask students to put down their devices, but I wonder if the advent of texting and twitter and other such tools has changed the dynamic enough that it is worth revisiting the topic one more time.

Has the accelerating ease and frequency of back-channel social communication changed the university classroom experience in a significant way, or does it remain a tedious topic?

FWIW, I facilitate/lecture often in various settings, and I like seeing a back-channel discussion taking place on twitter, even if it is not always 100% supportive of my content or approach.; 10/9/14, 12:19 AM
Humperdink said...: Hunt For Red October ... great movie.; 10/9/14, 5:29 AM
Humperdink said...: As was Second Hand Lions (Robert Duval was outstanding) and Amazing Grace.

The ending of Amazing Grace still sends chills up my spine.; 10/9/14, 5:36 AM
Jaq said...: it is pretty clear that the family of the man who broke laws to get into the US and who brought a disease here that was not known previously to exist in the US is going to sue for money because his case was not handled with the quality of vision accorded hindsight.; 10/9/14, 6:15 AM
Humperdink said...: Especially since The Most Reverend *cough* Jesse Jackson has made a guest appearance.; 10/9/14, 7:10 AM
Tank said...: Further on pancakes:

But Quaker Oats, the current owner of the brand, said in response to the lawsuit last month that Aunt Jemima was never real.

“The image symbolizes a sense of caring, warmth, hospitality and comfort, and is neither based on, nor meant to depict any one person,” said the statement from Quaker Oats, a subsidiary of PepsiCo. “While we cannot discuss the details of pending litigation, we do not believe there is any merit to this lawsuit.”

No contracts have been located between Aunt Jemima models and their pancake bosses, according to PepsiCo correspondence with plaintiffs contained in the lawsuit.

But Harrington’s descendants contend they did exist.

The company does not have contracts. Obviously, the Plaintiffs do not have contracts. No one has contracts. Motion to dismiss. Sanctions?; 10/9/14, 7:31 AM
MadisonMan said...: it is pretty clear that the family of the man who broke laws to get into the US and who brought a disease here that was not known previously to exist in the US is going to sue

They have to live first.; 10/9/14, 7:40 AM
pm317 said...: Even the tingleman is going after Obama..

somewhere in there he says "[Obama]needs to get a chief of staff, a real chief of staff.." why? VJ is not working out?; 10/9/14, 7:43 AM
Tank said...: VJ knows where the bodies are buried. Can't fire her.; 10/9/14, 7:49 AM
pm317 said...: @Tank.. I know VJ is unfireable.. and she won't like her 'perks and power' reduced either. Obama is impotent in front of her. Can anyone understand a presidency reduced to one woman behind the scenes show and not in a good way?

In other news, another one of Obama failures just before the election. Man, when it rains it pours.; 10/9/14, 8:16 AM
Hagar said...: I saw an article that the Democrats in Virginia are suing to have the last re-districting overturned on the grounds that the Republicans had gerrymandered "Black neighborhoods into "Black" voting districts in order to diminish the influence of Black voters.

Is not this a dynamite argument for the Democratsto be using?; 10/9/14, 8:21 AM
Hagar said...: Actually, not "Dynamite (TM)", but pure nitro-glycerin.; 10/9/14, 8:34 AM
Jaq said...: "Hunt For Red October ... great movie."

Better book.; 10/9/14, 8:55 AM
Humperdink said...: Sean Connery wasn't in the book.; 10/9/14, 9:11 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "Gee I sure wish I could edit posts."

Just copy the text into a new comment, edit, then delete the first one.; 10/9/14, 9:16 AM
Unknown said...: Follow your dreams no matter what, you can do anything, you can be whatever you want. When did discipline and effort get lost as a way to succeed? When did they stop teaching "know yourself" and "challenge the limits"? This is affirmative action for everyone.; 10/9/14, 9:31 AM
Fernandinande said...: We need a War On Multi-tasking so lotsa people will be in prison where they can't hurt themselves.

Multitasking Damages Your Brain And Career, New Studies Suggest

Multitasking Lowers IQ**
Research also shows that, in addition to slowing you down, multitasking lowers your IQ.

Brain Damage From Multitasking
It was long believed that cognitive impairment from multitasking was temporary, but new research suggests otherwise.
++

**All Right Thinking people know that IQ tests just measure the ability to take IQ tests and that it is otherwise a worthless - and racist [of course] - concept.; 10/9/14, 9:31 AM
Fernandinande said...: madAsHell said...
...Ebola.
What could go wrong?

Come on in, the Plague Is Fine (gcochran); 10/9/14, 9:35 AM
JOB said...: Nine Lessons in Landscape-Watching

I
Watch the land curl around a couple buckets of old paint:
Whorls of tree, cloud, hill and plain make their acquaintance
With the crow’s hueless shadow and the robin’s blue nature.

II
Make this tree a trigonometric persuasion of song;
Make this gently sloping hill the tumid topography of antiphons.
Sweet tubers of melody grow madly certain in loam’s richness.

III
See that overlap of a sky’s azure dish and creamy clouds?
What better imitates the fused cohesion of the sun’s ambitions
Spread across the venues and vistas of an open-fisted apple orchard?

IV
The lone figure on the far green hill is a man full of perhaps.
How well this man snaps into the world’s perfectly becoming metaphor.
But neither man nor world are as certainly there as the watchful sun.

V
Where shadows creep toward the zero hour, noon’s perfect template,
Leafy gnomons, conical conifers and rough rhomboids are ascendant and aslant.
Let trees be their own geometry. Let pollards be lemmas to the proof.

VI
“Wait,” says the eye to the scene filled with passing eloquence,
“I have not had my fill of feasting on the colored things or the things
Draped by the wind.” But it is too late. Time is the only landscape of the mind.

VII
This too is a fox’s fable: the changing light of autumn
Once dwelt in exile, a spy among rabbit warrens, much like the mole
That stole the gopher’s tunnel, sowing big bones in wilderness.

VIII
One asks a question of the landscape: “Is it better to sit
As still as the eye of a pike in the eye of a pond in the eye of the sky,
Or to be the blur of scales in blue water blurred by drapes of wind?”

IX
Observe: if the landscape is winter, you too will be the winter.
And if the summer, you too will be the summer by proxy.
But if the landscape is changing, you will be the landscape.; 10/9/14, 9:50 AM