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blogging every day since January 14, 2004
The idea that the Moon was not perfectly smooth can be traced as far back as approximately 450 BC, when Democritus believed that there were "lofty mountains and hollow valleys" on the Moon. However, it was not until the end of the 15th century when serious study of selenography began... The systematic mapping of the Moon officially began in 1779 when Johann Schröter started making meticulous observations and measurements of the lunar features. The first published large map of the Moon, four sheets in size, was published in 1834... All measurements were done by direct observation until March 1840, when J.W. Draper, using a five-inch reflector, produced a daguerreotype of the Moon....Here's that daguerreotype:
Now that even former Director Comey has acknowledged that the Constitution would permit the president to direct the Justice Department and the FBI in this matter, let us put the issue of obstruction of justice behind us once and for all and focus on the political, moral, and other non-criminal aspects of President Trump’s conduct.ADDED: What's so good about that is not the legal analysis but the recognition of the priority of political analysis. I'm seeing way too much "legal" analysis that follows political opinion, and I believe that the political analysis is, for nearly everyone, prior to the legal analysis. So let's increase the chances of accuracy, honesty, and persuasiveness, by talking about what we are probably really thinking about: the politics. And I don't mean are we pro- or anti-Trump. If that's all it is, there's nothing special to talk about here. I mean the positive value and the risks of an independent FBI and positive value and the risks of a President influencing, exerting pressure on, or overriding the FBI. In that light, did Trump do something wrong?
Comey’s testimony was devastating with regard to President Trump’s credibility – at least as Comey sees it. He was also critical of President Trump’s failure to observe the recent tradition of FBI independence from presidential influence. These are issues worth discussing but they have been distorted by the insistence of Democratic pundits that Trump must have committed a crime because they disagree with what he did politically.
LAST NIGHT @KeshaRose found out @JerrySeinfeld is not a #Hugger -- Is it hard to be a non-hugger in 2017? pic.twitter.com/92OoMFCNkd— Tommy McFLY (@TommyMcFLY) June 6, 2017
"I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything."It didn't work for Kesha, because Seinfeld didn't know who she was. Within her world, she's a star and when she wants to hug, apparently, she gets her hugs. They let her do it.
"In my reality… I don’t hug a total stranger. I have to meet someone, say hello. I gotta start somewhere. Hug isn’t first moment of a human, two humans. I never did that."The assumption that men always want physical contact with attractive/youngish women might be as bad as the atTrumption that when a man's a star the women let him do anything. (And I know, I'm not a man, and I expect you to school me about how men feel, but it doesn't matter if 90% of men want women — young, attractive women — to fling themselves into the man's arms and hug and kiss him. The 10% matter. And the 90% deserve to be asked for an indication of consent before the desired thing is transformed into a reality.)
"I got a borderline harassment case here!"
"I am not hinting at anything. I will tell you about it over a very short period of time," Trump said, twice declining to elaborate._________________________
He later said reporters were "going to be very disappointed when you hear the answer."
With all of the recently reported electronic surveillance, intercepts, unmasking and illegal leaking of information, I have no idea...And let me front-page the final results on that poll:
...whether there are "tapes" or recordings of my conversations with James Comey, but I did not make, and do not have, any such recordings.
Milwaukee Forge says it’s looking for people with at least two years of manufacturing experience but not necessarily at a forge shop, where steel is heated to 2,000 degrees and hammered into shape...
“These guys are craftsmen. What they do is an art form.... It’s not easy to find people … and we aren’t just taking anybody who walks in off the street. We are looking for long-term relationships"....
"Good Lord, yes, this job market is good if you’re interested in manufacturing"....
On to Roy Blunt, who needles Comey about why he was willing to keep working under Trump. Comey affirms that if he hadn't been fired, he'd still be working under Trump. Blunt suggests that the story Comey is telling today is the view "in retrospect," influenced by his having been fired. He didn't resign and, before the firing, he didn't let the Justice Department know about his misgivings.
Comey says that "at some point... I was sure we were going to brief it to the [Justice Department] team in charge of the case." And, Comey notes, he tried to keep the Attorney General from getting "kicked out of the room." He said to the Attorney General "I report to you. It is very important you be between me and the white house."
Blunt gets back to the subject of Comey's leaking the memo about the Flynn conversation.
BLUNT: So you didn't consider your memo or your sense of that conversation to be a government document. You considered it to be, somehow, your own personal document that you could share to the media as you wanted through a friend?I had to go back to the video to understand the "feeding seagulls at the beach" remark. The bracketed material you see there is my correction of the transcript. I'm using Politico's transcript, by the way, and the mistakes, notably in punctuation, are irritating. The comma after "beach" is crucial to understanding. It's also important that the word was "wary," not, as Politico has it, "weary." Comey wasn't tired of the press, but vigilant. They were like seagulls, flocking where they anticipated feeding, and Comey didn't want to appear to be feeding these scavengers or didn't want to reward them for hanging out in his driveway.
COMEY: Correct. I understood this to be my recollection recorded of my conversation with the president. As a private citizen, I thought it important to get it out.... My view was that the content of those unclassified, memorialization of those conversations was my recollection recorded.
BLUNT: So why didn't you give those to somebody yourself rather than give them through a third party?
COMEY: Because I was [wary] the media was camping at the end of my driveway at that point. I was actually going out of town with my wife to hide. I worried it would be [like] feeding seagulls at the beach[, i]f it was I who gave it to the media. I asked my friend, make sure this gets out.
Blunt hasn't got enough time left to do anything but muse that Comey "create[d] a source close to the former director of the FBI as opposed to taking responsibility yourself." Yes, but so what? Was this another instance of a failure of courage? Is Comey improperly tending to his personal image?
Angus King — an Independent who caucuses with the Democrats — goes next. There's what sounds like a rehearsed dialogue that gets bungled (perhaps because Comey doesn't trust King to get his line out):
KING: [W]hen a president of the United States in the Oval Office says something like, I hope or I suggest or would you, do you take that as a directive?The bracketed name is heard in the video but missing (with no indication of an omission) in the Politico transcript. Lame.
COMEY: Yes. It rings in my ear as, well, will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest.
KING: I was just going to quote that, in 1179, December 27th, Henry II said, who will rid me of the meddlesome priest, and the next day, he was killed. [Thomas a Becket.] Exactly the same situation. We're thinking along the same lines.
King's "Exactly the same situation" is a tad overeager. And he screws up the quote. Not only is what Trump said not "exactly the same," Comey's quote "will no one rid me..." isn't even exactly the same as King's version "who will rid me...." In Senator King's version, Henry is asking who will do it. In Comey's version, Henry is expressing displeasure that it may not happen. Who got the quote right? It's not clear exactly what Henry said all those many years ago. There's no recorded recollection memo, but an oral tradition.
According to Wikipedia, the most common quote is "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" but according to the historian Simon Schama, what Henry really said was: "What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and brought up in my household, who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born cleric?"
We don't really know what Henry said, but we do know that it was taken as a directive to kill Thomas Beckett. And the analogue here is that Comey took Trump's remark as a directive. The puzzle remains whether it was a directive. We should all understand that leaders may express themselves in enigmatic ways that are useful to keep themselves above the fray but that the underlings know how to interpret. We still need to think carefully about particular assertions that something that wasn't said was implied.
Next is Senator Lankford, who wonders why Trump used such a light touch if he really wanted to stop the investigation. Why not be explicit? It is that "he doesn't have the authority"?
COMEY: I'm not a legal scholar, [so smarter people answer this better,] but as a legal matter, the president is the head of the executive branch and could direct, in theory, we have important norms against this, but [direct that anybody be investigated or anybody not be investigated]. I think he has the legal authority. All of us ultimately report in the executive branch to the president.If the President can do that but didn't, does that mean he didn't want his vague expression to be taken as a directive? That would have been my follow up, and I assume that Comey would have said Trump may have found it more convenient to avoid taking responsibility for the action if Comey had done what Trump wanted....
Despite so many false statements and lies, total and complete vindication...and WOW, Comey is a leaker!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 9, 2017
And here's The Washington Post:
Sometimes the going-big gamble backfires. After the intense promotion of the Comey testimony before it took place, I think The New York Times and The Washington Post would have doubled down if they'd drawn any good cards at yesterday's hearing.
Not the NYT print edition in NYC. It is a full banner about Comey and goes full Trump Derangement Syndrome. "Comey Bluntly Raises Possibility of Trump Obstruction and Condemns His ‘Lies’"I can see the facsimile of the front-page of New York edition at nytimes.com:
SEN. RICHARD BURR [Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence]: There are several outstanding issues not addressed in your statement...Here's where we discussed Comey's 7-page statement. I said I wanted to hear "what Comey and Trump meant by their shared silent gazing into each other's eyes, by their coming to rest upon the slippery phrase 'honest loyalty,' and the mystery of 'that thing' in 'we had that thing, you know.'"
The schedule has been cleared and the popcorn readied at Evergreen Partners, a strategic communications firm in central New Jersey, where the rule for employees on Thursday morning is simple: No client talk while James B. Comey is speaking.Incredible! Not just the hype and the too-early drooling for blood, but the disregard for the demands of working life for active, engaged American adults. Everything will be available on the internet this evening. Who are these people going public with their plan to take off from work and drink and watch a congressional hearing? This strikes me as utterly deranged (as well as creepily privileged). How is looking deranged and economically privileged going to draw in the ordinary Americans you're going to need if you're going to get this Destroy Trump bandwagon rolling?
“We canceled meetings when we saw what time it was on,” said the firm’s president, Karen J. Kessler, who is planning a cheese-and-crackers spread by her office’s 60-inch screen. “It’s must-see TV.”
Americans do not agree on much these days. But millions are expected to pause on Thursday to take in a spectacle already being compared to other political-cultural touchstones, like the Army-McCarthy hearings and Anita Hill’s testimony about Clarence Thomas.
“They really should declare a national holiday,” said Sally Quinn, the journalist and the doyenne of Washington’s social circuit, “since no work is going to get done.”Well, I'm not surprised a bar is encouraging daytime drinking. Saunders's idea sounds like something cooked up by a team on an "Apprentice" challenge (if "The Apprentice" ever had anything alcohol-related).
Enterprising establishments have been quick to capitalize on the Super Bowl-like atmosphere. At Union Pub in Washington, a sports bar steps from the Hart Senate Office Building, bartenders plan to dole out a free round of Budweisers or bourbon shots every time Mr. Trump blasts out a tweet.
For those wondering: No, there will not be a limit. “We’ll give out 20 rounds” if the president tweets 20 times, Ashley Saunders, the bar’s general manager, said in an interview.
As she spoke, Ms. Saunders was testing a way to create a huge display of Mr. Trump’s Twitter feed that would run alongside the live coverage on the bar’s 18 television screens — the better for her Capitol Hill clientele to follow any presidential play-by-play.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if people took half-days or take the day off,” Ms. Saunders said. “If I had a normal job, I don’t know what I’d be doing.”
A dive bar 1,400 miles away from the nation’s capital, Jimmy’s is popular with military veterans like Doug Samuels, a retired Navy officer who voted for Mr. Trump. Nursing a Bud Light on Wednesday, Mr. Samuels said he was unlikely to watch the Comey broadcast live.He sounds so sober. By the way, what weird writing: "he said, a display of pro-Trump bumper stickers on a nearby table’s legs." When Sally Quinn says something, the "said" clause is followed by "the journalist and the doyenne of Washington’s social circuit." When the guy 1,400 miles out of Washington says something, the "said" clause is followed by something about what's on the leg of nearby table.
“I’d rather just listen to the pundits discuss it afterward,” he said, a display of pro-Trump bumper stickers on a nearby table’s legs.
An emotionally disturbed woman who somehow scared riders on a B train near Central Park West sparked a panic at the height of Wednesday's morning rush, with straphangers tweeting about "mass evacuations" and "people stampeding," authorities said.Just the day before, we heard about passengers panicking on the NYC subway that just got stuck between stations for an hour.
“I literally took the picture to show my mum and dad in South Africa, ‘Look there’s a tornado,’ and now everyone is like, ‘Why is your husband mowing the lawn?”‘ Cecilia Wessels said Saturday....
What survives are 6x4 slips of paper on which each entry is typed. There are 153, 700 and 33 slips for the letters A, B and Z respectively.Anna Edwards, the archivist of the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, said:
"We found the surviving fragments of the dictionary at the bottom of a large cardboard box, packed underneath some old bedsheets. I suppose the reason for not finding this earlier is that the box seemed to be full of household objects, not literary papers.”...There are a few entries reproduced at the link (which goes to The Guardian), including:
Abdabs (the screaming) – Fit of nerves, attack of delirium tremens, or other uncontrollable emotional crisis. Perhaps imitative of spasm of the jaw, with short, sharp screams....This makes me think of a topic I'd been contemplating writing about: the problem of making a movie out of a book. I'm thinking about it today because I finally got the DVD of "The Mosquito Coast" that I ordered. While waiting for the movie, I read the book. Now, I'm trying to watch the movie without being dogged by thoughts about what's different from the book or not as good as the book, etc. etc. I was just reading a lot of articles about why it's so hard to make satisfying book-based movies (unless the book is rather bad (e.g., "The Godfather")).
Abortion – Anything ugly, ill-shapen, or generally detestable: ‘You look a right bloody abortion, dressed like that’; ‘a nasty little abortion of a film’ (Australian in origin)....
We got Coco [Johnson] Tuesday at Burbank Airport, and she told us she believes Bill simply thought it was no big deal and no one would care that he jokingly referred to himself as a "house n*****."... She thinks Bill could use some sensitivity training courtesy of the NAACP.Sensitivity training for comedians? That doesn't sound right.
At least 12 people were killed and 42 others wounded Wednesday morning in a pair of devastating attacks on two of Iran’s most potent symbols: the national Parliament and the mausoleum of the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
The Islamic State immediately claimed responsibility; if that is found to be true, the attacks would be the terrorist group’s first major assault within Iran’s borders. Suspicions in Tehran were also directed at Saudi Arabia, Iran’s nemesis in the region, which has been newly emboldened by a supportive visit from President Trump last month.
In the view of many in Iran, the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, is inextricably linked to Saudi Arabia. Hamidreza Taraghi, a hard-line analyst with ties to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said, “ISIS ideologically, financially and logistically is fully supported and sponsored by Saudi Arabia. They are one and the same,” he added.
Qatar has long been accused of funneling arms and money to radical groups in Syria, Libya and other Arab countries. But so has Saudi Arabia. And Mr. Trump’s tweets have huge potential strategic consequences in the Middle East, where Qatar is a crucial military outpost for the United States....
It has also built deep ties to American academia, providing funding and real estate to build Middle Eastern campuses for six major universities, including Cornell, Georgetown and Northwestern.
Qatar’s financing of radical groups has long been a source of tension with Washington. But the United States has generally avoided taking sides in the regional feuds in the Persian Gulf since it has strategic ties with several of the gulf states.
Ahab, too, is a poet of eloquence. He says, "The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails whereon my soul is grooved to run." Or these lines, "All visible objects are but pasteboard masks." Quotable poetic phrases that can't be beat.I wanted to know more about that "visible objects are but pasteboard masks" business, so I looked it up, and I see that Melville wrote:
"All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks."There's that seemingly beatnik "man" popping up in Ahab's speech. I have to strain to hear it as some kind of 19th century bombast, sermonish.
But in each event—in the living act, the undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there's naught beyond. But 'tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me. For could the sun do that, then could I do the other; since there is ever a sort of fair play herein, jealousy presiding over all creations. But not my master, man, is even that fair play. Who's over me?
When cats have to stick their faces into deep bowls and their whiskers rub up against the sides, the experience can be stressful, prompting them to paw the food onto the floor, fight with other cats or grow apprehensive at mealtimes.Is this a promo for a company that makes insanely expensive cat bowls? I don't know but I think Dr. Catsby's Food Bowl for Whisker Relief looks pretty nice, and if you buy it using my link, you'll be helping the cause of the Althouse blog, which dogs the NYT daily, giving you your feed, and rubbing your whiskers just the right wrong way.
Some companies have begun to advertise their food bowls as “whisker friendly.” One of them is Hepper, which makes whisker-conscious Nom Nom bowls ($39.99, or $71.99 for two), which are one inch deep and four-inches by five-inches wide. They are made of stainless steel, which — unlike plastic — will not harbor the bacteria that can lead to chin acne (known colloquially as “catne”).
They have a section where you mark comments as Allow or Block to see how your moderating would compare to theirs.The study might ironically show that The Guardian is sexist. It may be that The Guardian thinks it's necessary to protect female writers from vigorous pushback but sees the male writers as able to sustain attacks and defend themselves.
This revealed, in my opinion, that their methodology is flawed. Take this for example, which they mark as "sexist" and block worthy:
“THERE IS NO GENDER PAY GAP! Just more feminist crap portraying women as victims and men as perpetrators. Even worse is the lie we live in a rape culture with one in five women raped over a lifetime. Sure if you re-define what constitutes a rape including a drunk girl gives consent but regrets it next day.”
It may be be wrong. It may be off topic. It is not, however, sexist.
They did this study by tallying up comments they blocked. If they're blocking that kind of thing, I'm not sure that their data is particularly meaningful.
On Monday evening, the Intercept published what appears to be a May 5 intelligence report from the National Security Agency that describes two cyberattacks carried out by Russian government hackers against employees of a company that provides technical support to state voting agencies, which occurred shortly before the 2016 election. (The Intercept’s Sam Biddle noted, “There’s nothing in the NSA report indicating the actual voting machines or vote tabulations were compromised” — though this certainly opens up a whole new dimension in the ongoing investigation into Russia’s election meddling and potential contact with the Trump campaign.)
About an hour after the report was published, the Justice Department announced that 25-year-old Reality Leigh Winner, a government contractor, has been charged with taking classified material from a government facility and mailing it to a news outlet.....
A handful of admitted students formed the messaging group—titled, at one point, “Harvard memes for horny bourgeois teens”—on Facebook in late December, according to two incoming freshmen. In the group, students sent each other memes and other images mocking sexual assault, the Holocaust, and the deaths of children, according to screenshots of the chat obtained by The Crimson. Some of the messages joked that abusing children was sexually arousing, while others had punchlines directed at specific ethnic or racial groups. One called the hypothetical hanging of a Mexican child “piñata time.”...
Cassandra Luca ’21, who joined the first meme group but not the second... said the founders of the “dark” group chat... "were like, ‘Oh, you have to send a meme to the original group to prove that you could get into the new one’... This was a just-because-we-got-into-Harvard-doesn’t-mean-we-can’t-have-fun kind of thing... I don’t think the school should have gone in and rescinded some offers because it wasn’t Harvard-affiliated, it was people doing stupid stuff."...
[Jessica Zhang ’21, an incoming freshman who joined both chats, said] “I appreciate humor, but there are so many topics that just should not be joked about... I respect the decision of the admissions officers to rescind the offers because those actions really spoke about the students’ true characters.”...
In the mail came two issues of a gay-lifestyle magazine its founder is hoping I might contribute to. It’s not my kind of thing, but I got a kick out of the letters to the editor, which are startling when you substitute the word white for gay.
Dear Hero,
I am a white man living in Kansas and your hot magazine came as such a relief. Finally a publication for people who are proud to be white, and want to know what other white people are up to. It’s nice to know that I am not alone. White people have come a long way, but we’ve got a lot farther to go. There’s no white pride parade in my town, but in the meantime I’ll keep my fingers crossed, and continue reading your great white magazine!
When she insisted that teachers “are supposed to be open to opinions,” however, Mr. Sutter held his ground.A public school teacher chose a video for the purpose of presenting an argument based on Christianity?! It's supposed to be a science class. It's not a class about the history of religion or comparative religion. As the NYT presents it, the teacher was introducing religious material for the purpose of bolstering a scientific conclusion.
“It’s not about opinions,” he told her. “It’s about the evidence.”
“It’s like you can’t disagree with a scientist or you’re ‘denying science,”’ she sniffed to her friends.
Gwen, 17, could not put her finger on why she found Mr. Sutter, whose biology class she had enjoyed, suddenly so insufferable. Mr. Sutter, sensing that his facts and figures were not helping, was at a loss. And the day she grew so agitated by a documentary he was showing that she bolted out of the school left them both shaken.
“I have a runner,” Mr. Sutter called down to the office, switching off the video.
He had chosen the video, an episode from an Emmy-winning series that featured a Christian climate activist and high production values, as a counterpoint to another of Gwen’s objections, that a belief in climate change does not jibe with Christianity.
“It was just so biased toward saying climate change is real,” she said later, trying to explain her flight. “And that all these people that I pretty much am like are wrong and stupid.”
In the year 2274, the remnants of human civilization live in a sealed city contained beneath a cluster of geodesic domes... The citizens live a hedonistic life but, to maintain the city, everyone must undergo the ritual of Carousel when they reach the age of 30... [E]ach person is implanted at birth with a "life-clock" crystal in the palm of their hand that changes color as they get older and begins blinking as they approach their "Last Day." Most residents accept this promise of rebirth, but those who do not and attempt to flee the city are known as "Runners." An elite team of policemen known as "Sandmen"... are assigned to pursue and terminate Runners as they try to escape....RUNNER!
The interview, which was teased for weeks on NBC as a must-see exclusive, lasted less than 10 minutes. But that was just about enough time to confirm that she’s still not a great interviewer, and he’s still one of the most deceptive interview subjects around.Fingerprints, hoof prints, horn prints... That's funny.
Short of asking “How many people have you killed with your bare hands, Mr. Putin?,” Kelly did everything she could to get something out of him other than smirks, huffs and “nyets.”...
Clips were played from the event that showed Kelly asking Putin in front of 4,000 guests about Russia’s role in the hacking of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Did Russia hack the U.S. election, she asked, pointing out that U.S. intelligence agencies had found ample evidence, “fingerprints,” that it had meddled.
“What fingerprints, hoof prints, horn prints?,” he answered dismissively. “What are you talking about? … It could come from your home IP address, as if your daughter carried out the attack.”
To make matters worse, Oliver Stone’s “The Putin Interviews,” where the filmmaker spent significantly more time with the Russian leader for a Showtime special, will air over four consecutive nights next week. They even watched “Dr. Strangelove” together.Now, that I will watch. Brilliant.
TAPPER: Hillary Clinton said something very interesting this week that reminded me of something that you said in a hearing not long ago. She said that she believes that the Russians, in their interference in the U.S. election, must have been guided by Americans. Take a listen.Asked: "Guided by Americans?" She responds:
HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON (D), FORMER U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE (on video): The Russians, in my opinion, and based on the intel and counterintel people I talk to, could not have known how to best weaponize that information unless they had been guided. And here's...
CLINTON: Guided by Americans and guided by people who had polling and data information.Actually, if you take all the words seriously, she's saying almost nothing. "Weaponize" sounds scary, but all that was "weaponized" was "information," which I think mainly refers to things her people wrote in their own email. And she just has an "opinion" that in order to "best weaponize," some Americans would have been needed to give advice. But she doesn't even say that the the info was "best weaponize[d]" or even that the Russians were doing the weaponization. And it's all only an "opinion."
Madison Mayor Paul Soglin said Saturday that he’s considering seeking the Democratic nomination for governor in 2018....
It marked a reversal for Soglin, who said in December he had “no interest” in challenging Walker.... Soglin said the surprising appeal of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, particularly in Wisconsin, is part of what changed his mind....