Althouse: The last day of fall is a beautiful day for a sunrise...

December 20, 2021

The last day of fall is a beautiful day for a sunrise...

... and for a waning gibbous moon...

23 comments:

gilbar said...: i miss the Old Days,
back when Professor Althouse would base her life, around approving our comments promptly
I Also miss the Even Older Days, back when my mom would make me lunch; And afternoon snacks
mmmm Afternoon Snacks :); 12/20/21, 6:13 PM
gilbar said...: the 2nd pic is very nice... But i'd crop the top, and make it more 16X9. mmmm 16X9; 12/20/21, 6:15 PM
madAsHell said...: My in-laws live in a downtown condo building in Portland, OR.

The view from the condo allowed me to see inside several empty office buildings.

My brother-in-law's wife is a banker. She evaluates commercial property up-n-down the I-5 corridor.

I asked her, "When is this all going to return?......I mean, a lotta these building owners have to be eye-balling bankruptcy."

"True. I don't see people returning to Class A office space for at least 10 years."

The banker continued with "Furthermore, I no longer feel safe in the downtown area, and some of the bankers are starting to carry."

She went on to elaborate that the downtown area was anywhere near the courthouse, Nordstroms, China town, or the train station.; 12/20/21, 6:17 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: This is incredible. Apparent health authorities are willing to lose in court so that a published peer reviewed paper does not continue to see the light of day. Who has that kind of power?

link to Dark Horse podcast; 12/20/21, 6:23 PM
madAsHell said...: I'm feeling triggered, and oppressed by the moderation updates!!; 12/20/21, 6:34 PM
Gospace said...: Implanted vaccine passport. Why, I’m old enough to remember this was conspiracy theory stuff.; 12/20/21, 6:44 PM
wildswan said...: So the Dems are insulting Manchin even though if he leaves the Dem party the Republicans take control of the Senate. And here's another equally good idea - the DC types are thinking of going to West Virginia and talking to the people there. And just quietly telling them that the Federal government [pronouns: the Highest, the Highests) was going to give them a lot of money for free and get rid of coal mines and cars and grilling and the police and men and women. But Joe Manchin got in the way.; 12/20/21, 6:45 PM
rhhardin said...: Gibbous moon, Gould plays Orlando Gibbons
Lord Salisbury; 12/20/21, 7:23 PM
Drago said...: Kamala: "It is no one's fault that this virus hit our shores, or hit the world."

dems going to bat for their ChiCom allies...again. As always.; 12/20/21, 8:52 PM
madAsHell said...: A couple of questions.......why do homeless people have SOOOOO much broken shit??

.....and where do they get the money to pay for the paint that creates their graffiti?

I mean.....at one time in my life....I understood the volume of a spray paint can......mainly for pyro-technical experiments, but I'm sure I've squandered more than a few paint cans expressing myself on the side of the school gymnasium.

You learned to keep it brief, and terse....cuz the can was gonna be empty soon.; 12/20/21, 8:59 PM
madAsHell said...: The dead guy on the door.

I've always wondered why law firms kept dead people listed on the door.

Mom died recently, I need to close out the estate, and I'm wondering which way to turn. We recently had the will re-written on the 36th floor of Two Union Square in Seattle.

Guess what? I'm cheap. They were good, but I don't want to pay for that view. I'm not going there again.

Mom and Dad were in business together. They ran a pharmacy on University Way in Seattle. The stress, and strain of managing a day-to-day business, and raising a family took a toll on their relationship. Mom broke, and ran to the attorney. Mom wanted a divorce.

"I want a divorce!!"

"Is he cheating on you?"

"Not that I know."

"Is he beating you?"

"No"

"You need to go home, and fix fences."

Many years later, Mom was upset that Dad died two weeks before their 60th wedding anniversary.

Today, I received a greeting card from my parent's former attorney law firm. I immediately recognized the name of the dead guy on the door, and I think I found my estate attorney.; 12/20/21, 9:37 PM
Narr said...: I'm dragging the 'students today' thread up here, after reading the latest comments posted.

My teaching career was only three lower-division history survey courses. I can't even recall the exact years--1988 maybe, '98, 2002 I remember because it was just after 9-11 and it was a section of World Civ II. The other two were AmHist to 1877. The first time, I was asked by guys who had taught me, and in 2002 I asked one of them, who was chair at the time.

I figure I made about $12-15/hour counting prep and grading (which is the pits).

Syllabi were minimal, for all our sakes. I made them as clear as I could but you can never do enough.

Turned out, some of them didn't know that books had indexes, and some couldn't find the USA on a map of North America. They didn't know 'primus inter pares,' or 'bete noire,' or 'enfant terrible.' (These words were in the texts or readings.)

For the second time I had wised up, and gave a short map-quiz at the beginning of the first class-- an ouline map of the world in a standard projection, with some places lettered, such as "A" for the Panama Canal, 'B' for Great Britain, 'C' for Moscow, 'D' Egypt, that sort of middle-school geography. All they had to do was match (with a few herrings thrown in).

Some of them had no idea, and some didn't even understand what they were expected to do.

I told them it was not a graded exercise but if they didn't do well on that they wouldn't do well in my class.

They were also challenged to bring out discrepancies between texts and maps if they saw any, but they never did mention the few I saw.; 12/20/21, 9:59 PM
Mike of Snoqualmie said...: The guy renting the upstairs portion of the house we rent is from Portland. He and his wife are moving their business from Portland OR to Tukwila WA (just south of Seattle). I haven't talked to him much and he hasn't said why they're moving, but I wouldn't be surprised that it's do to the transformation of Portland into a sh*thole, lawless city.

Portland used to be nice. I'll never stay there again until they start arresting antifa domestic terrorists and start involuntarily committing the homeless into medical treatment.; 12/20/21, 10:47 PM
Joe Smith said...: First, they came for my gas stove, and I said nothing...; 12/20/21, 11:16 PM
Maria said...: hey there, Get Updated with whats going around with The Blog 101.; 12/21/21, 5:30 AM
gadfly said...: "We are closer to civil war than any of us would like to believe," said Dr. Barbara Walter, who serves on the CIA's Political Instability Task Force. The UC San Diego academic has studied hotspots like Syria and helps run a blog on political violence, said the U.S. meets several of the telltale signs that are part of a road to insurgency.

Two problems: First she is a political scientist, which means she really only has unprovable opinions of a social nature; second, she is selling a new book entitled "How Civil Wars Start" - her first book written since way back in 2009.

She labels the U.S. as an "anocracy" - somewhere between a democracy and an autocracy, after a slide based on factors in her criteria during the four years of the Trump. She likely was in diapers when LBJ imposed the massive "Great Society" burden on us atop a full-blown war in the late '60s. And she says we are no longer the world's oldest continuous democracy - but we have never been a true democracy and it is doubtful that Switzerland meets such a test either.; 12/21/21, 5:49 AM
MadTownGuy said...: Drago said...

"...dems going to bat for their ChiCom allies...again. As always."

I see what you did there.; 12/21/21, 6:47 AM
Lucien said...: A couple of constitutional law questions:
1) If the office of the Vice President is vacant (or if the VP is acting as President), then the President Pro Tempore of the Senate acts as president of the Senate; but §4 of the 25th Amendment allows for removal of an incapacitated President by the V P and cabinet. It doesn’t say “the Vice President or the Senate President Pro Tem”; and moreover, under §4 the determination is supposed to be transmitted to the President Pro Tem (& the Speaker).
SO, if the office of the VP becomes vacant, is there any way of involuntarily removing the President?
2) Given our current situation of a 50-50 Senate, if the VP office becomes vacant, does the President Pro Tem (Leahy, I believe) lose his regular vote as a Senator, but keep the ability to break ties, vice versa? (Article I says each Senator gets one vote.) Would this be a matter of how the Senate rules are drawn, or a constitutional question? If Leahy were to lose his regular vote, would that make it a 50-49 Senate, where McConnell would be in charge?; 12/21/21, 8:17 AM
Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...: Good morning.

Close to Civil war = "corruptocrats face headwinds." How can the democratics get people to obey. Obey!; 12/21/21, 9:37 AM
Danno said...: Gadfly, we have never professed to be a true democracy. Can you say constitutional republic?; 12/21/21, 10:02 AM
Quaestor said...: Does Althouse walk or bike on these ante meridiem photographic excursions?

The second photo looks to have been taken near the "heel stone".; 12/21/21, 10:09 AM
Quaestor said...: Joe Smith writes, "First, they came for my gas stove, and I said nothing..."

There was a time when California was influential, the Golden State. Quomodo ceciderunt fortes.; 12/21/21, 10:18 AM
Drago said...: The Poor Man's LLR ***** gadfly: "but we have never been a true democracy and it is doubtful that Switzerland meets such a test either."

Being a "true democracy" is the test?

Uh, no.

That is not the "test".

Why don't you crack open a civics book from before, say, 1991, and let us know what you find there.; 12/21/21, 1:00 PM