"I got a kick out of the letters to the editor, which are startling when you substitute the word white for gay."

From the January 8, 2000 entry in David Sedaris's diary ("Theft by Finding: Diaries (1977-2002)"):

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!

"[I]ncreasingly, the Democrats’ populist pretensions conflict with their alliance with ascendant 'sovereigns of cyberspace,' whose power and wealth have waxed to almost absurd heights."

"Other parts of their upscale coalition include the media, academia and the upper bureaucracy. This affluent base can embrace the progressives’ social agenda — meeting the demands of feminists, gays and minority activists. But they are less enthusiastic about the social democratic income redistribution proposed by Bernie Sanders, who is now, by some measurements, the nation’s most popular political figure. This new putative ruling class... sees its rise, and the decline of the rest, not as a reflection of social inequity, but rather their meritocratic virtue. Only racism, homophobia or misogyny — in other words, the sins of the 'deplorables'— matter..... How long can this odd pairing of socialism and oligopoly persist? There are growing sentiments on the left to begin confiscating some of the massive wealth of the tech firms...."

From "The coming Democratic civil war," by Joel Kotkin.

When the NYT forgets about the Establishment Clause and public education.

I was stunned at something in the article "Climate Science Meets a Stubborn Obstacle: Students," which focuses on an Ohio public school teacher, James Sutter, who's having trouble getting his lesson across to a student named Gwen Beatty, who, we're told, is a straight-A student.

When she insisted that teachers “are supposed to be open to opinions,” however, Mr. Sutter held his ground.

“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.”

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.

Here's the video. It's almost an hour long, and I haven't watched it yet.



I don't know how much religion is in the video, and I'm not giving a legal opinion on whether the teacher violated the Establishment Clause. We can discuss that. I just want to call out the New York Times for its inattention to the Establishment Clause, which it usually expects its readers to take very seriously, especially in the context of educating children.

It makes me suspect that those who are demanding that we believe in climate change really are operating in a religion mode and that does not inspire confidence in science.

And, really, why is it so important for Miss Beatty to believe in climate change? She has an active and inquisitive mind. Why not feed it and support it and empower her to go where she sees fit? Bullying her with demands for belief — even without the religion larded in — isn't likely to inspire her to take on a STEM career.

I'd like to read the comments on this NYT article, but — despite the paper's new reliance on comments in lieu of a Public Editor — comments are not enabled for this one.

ADDED: "I have a runner" — that's weird. They have a word for kids like her? "Runner" made me think of "Logan's Run":

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 pop star wore a white outfit adorned with colorful photos of the Manchester victims who died in the May 22 attack..."

"... they could be seen around her collar, wrist and draped across her back in the shape of a heart."

It's a hard task, dancing and entertaining to the theme of death by terrorism. What can you do? Make it about the victims. How? Put a photograph of each one. Wear an outfit made of photographs. What else can you do?

I thought of the ice dancers Irina Lobacheva and Ilia Averbukh skating about September 11th, at the 2002 Winter Olympics (only 4 months after 9/11), in costumes representing destruction:



It's not easy. You're called upon to entertain the crowd and to embody something that must be represented as the polar opposite of entertaining, and yet you must, at some level, realize that there is a horrible, sick entertainment value to the terrorism — titillation stirring up the next attack and ratings for the news media that will stream coverage of the next event you'll be asked to commemorate in a costume.

"For me, this is just amazing. You created a sensation out of nothing. And out of this sensation, you turned it into a weapon of war against the current president."

"Well, this is, you know, you're just, you people are so creative over there. Good job. Your lives must be boring."

Said Vladimir Putin reveling in the nothingness of the interview he was giving to the American news star Megyn Kelly in the premiere of the much-hyped show "Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly."

Putin toyed with her for 10 minutes, the show broke for commercial, and after the break it was a new story, some corruption somewhere, perhaps in the drug business, in the manner of "60 Minutes," but with noticeably lower production values. I don't even watch "60 Minutes," so I'm not watching this. I turned it off, complaining about the fuss that had been made out of Megyn Kelly's big interview. It was a ridiculous session of Kelly staring, steely-eyed, at Putin as he delivered stern, emphatic denials. Did she imagine her glamour and steady eye contact would melt him?

Here's Lorraine Ali in the L.A. Times:

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.

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.”

Fingerprints, hoof prints, horn prints... That's funny.

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.

At Barriques Café...

... I was the first customer, when they opened at 7 a.m. I'd been up and blogging since 3.

I'd actually arrived at 6:47, so I set my timer to 6 minutes and walked into the neighborhood, then walked back when the alarm went off. When I got there the first time, a man and woman were standing around wondering what they should do, and when I got back they were sitting on the stoop. Maybe I should have let them go first, but they were sitting. I was walking upright as the barista came over to unlock the door. And I was only getting black coffee — smallest size, darkest roast — and I knew I'd be quick.

So, anyway, settle in and talk if you want. And, please, if you're thinking of shopping, here's a little door I call The Althouse Amazon Portal.

(Caveat emptor: Yelp says they open at 6. The sign in the window said 7.)

The collusion illusion.

On "State of the Union" today, Jake Tapper, talking to Virginia Senator Mark Warner, played a clip of Hillary Clinton speaking in a way that seemed a bit wacky:

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.

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...

Asked: "Guided by Americans?" She responds:

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."

I thought it sounded wacky because I heard it, initially, as an assertion that she knew Americans had to have helped the Russians weaponize information. Parsing it now, I feel that she chattered out a bunch of words that seemed to mean a lot but she preserved completely deniability by actually saying nothing. Check the transcript!

But Tapper asks Warner:

"[Filmmaker Errol] Morris studied history and philosophy of science under [Thomas] Kuhn at Princeton in the early 1970s and ended up loathing him."

"Morris suggests in a recent podcast that Kuhn’s 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions has contributed to 'the debasement of truth' and even the election of Donald Trump. Morris states: 'I see a line from Kuhn to Karl Rove and Kelly Ann Conway and Donald Trump.'"

From "Second Thoughts: Did Thomas Kuhn Help Elect Donald Trump?/Scholars debate filmmaker Errol Morris’s attack on Kuhn’s influential philosophy of science," by John Horgan in Scientific American.

Morris's podcast is here:

Al Gore says: "I live a carbon-free lifestyle to the maximum extent possible."

When confronted by Jake Tapper over his hypocrisy, today on "State of the Union":



A carbon-free lifestyle?! It's an oxymoron. I love when a guy who has been scolding us for almost 2 decades about our ignorance of science says something so blatantly absurd. If he were "carbon-free," he would not exist as a living physical entity.

I know the claim is something like "carbon neutral." All his carbon emissions are, he claims, "offset." You'll just have to take his word for that and back off, climate deniers.

Here's an article in Scientific American, "Can People Really Have Carbon-Neutral Lives?/Learn how you can work toward having zero climate impact."

ADDED: Transcript:

Who will challenge Governor Scott Walker in 2018?

Could it be Madison Mayor Paul Soglin?!

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....

I'm a morning person, obviously, or this would be terrible.

I'm interested in the "first sleep, second sleep" approach to sleeping. But what's the best interval? In the past 24 hours, I slept from 9:30 to 2:30 and then from 10 to 1. That can't be right! But I feel great, especially since I'm experiencing the day as 2 completely fresh mornings.

"Adults — they wear shorts everywhere, and they have cereal for dinner, and they treat comic books like they're literature."

Said Bill Maher at the beginning of that famous interview he did Friday with Senator Ben Sasse. Maher began the interview by offering to "bond" with Sasse, whose book — "The Vanishing American Adult" — is, according to Maher, "so right about how we have lost the thread about what adults are anymore in this country." Then Maher, with his trademark sneering contempt, launched the line I put in the post title. I loved that he began his image of the problem with what is my trademark peeve, shorts.

I didn't know what "bike badges" even were.

But here are lots of glorious photographs. Via Metafilter.

Here's an article on bike badges:

In the beginning, badges were often acid etched. This process required a copper, zinc or steel plate (among other metals) to be covered with wax that is resistant to acid. Artists then use etching needles to scratch the design right down into the bare metal. The plate was then dipped into a bath of acid, dissolving all of the exposed line sections. The wax was cleaned off the plate and it was inked over. Only the ink in the etched lines remained after the plate was wiped down.

In the early days, popular head badge themes included birds in flight, war scenes, planes, imagery of gods and depictions of power....

After the London Bridge terrorist attack, Theresa May calls for embarrassing conversations.

"So we need to become far more robust in identifying [terrorism] and stamping it out across the public sector and across society. That will require some difficult, and often embarrassing, conversations."

What's hiding behind that weasely "embarrassing"? She didn't deign to say anything that embarrassed her. It was all "society should continue to function in accordance with our values" and "the whole of our country needs to come together." And "conversation." Bromides. Oh, well, maybe that is embarrassing, but I don't think that's what she meant.

"I'm trying really hard to understand how this kind of appropriation without attribution is *not* a form of plagiarism."

"When you take someone else's ideas, their original work, and pass it off as your own ... yeah, that's what plagiarism is. I'm just ... trying to find a way around this. 'It's just a crossword' is the only defense I can imagine, and as you can imagine, I find that defense fantastically pathetic."

Rages Rex Parker, about the Sunday NYT crossword, which, he finds, lifted a bunch of — SPOILER ALERT — writing rules that break themselves (like "No sentence fragments").

He points us to a William Safire column published in the NYT in 1979:

Not long ago, I advertised for perverse rules of grammar, along the lines of “Remember to never split an infinitive” and “The passive voice should never be used.”

The notion of making a mistake while laying down rules (“Thimk,” “We Never Make Misteaks”) is highly unoriginal, and it turns out that English teachers have been circulating lists of fumblerules for years.

As owner of the world's largest collection, and with thanks to scores of readers, let me pass along a bunch of these never‐say‐neverisms....

So... Safire admitted the idea wasn't at all original, and he didn't write the examples but collected them from readers and passed them on. It was a cornball old English-teacher joke when Safire padded his column with this stuff in 1979. It's silly to think that we need to honor William Safire because he's the one that had the NYT column that became the place where this dusty old junk remained visible after 40 years. In any case, it's all so infra-NYT that I can't feel much outrage, but then I pretty much loathe crossword themes, especially when humor is involved. And I do the NYT crossword every day. I like interesting and unusual words. Themes... bleh. But I can see why Rex gets mad. He's all about demanding that the NYT puzzle live up to its own claims of greatness. And this wasn't great. "Plagiarism" was the least of it. I thought I'd enjoy jumping back into the world of William Safire, but the best I can say about that is that he admitted he was writing a lazy, unoriginal column.

ADDED: It's the kind of dumb humor that easily signaled — in 1976 — that Travis Bickle's date was horribly awkward:



"Organizized — it's a joke!"

"As changing technologies and preferences make government-funded broadcasting increasingly preposterous, such broadcasting actually becomes useful by illustrating two dismal facts."

"One is the immortality of entitlements that especially benefit those among society’s articulate upper reaches who feel entitled. The other fact is how impervious government programs are to evidence incompatible with their premises.... America, which is entertaining itself to inanition, has never experienced a scarcity of entertainment. Or a need for government-subsidized journalism that reports on the government."

Writes George Will in The Washington Post.