praise for Donald Trump

There is something eerily Hitler-esque about yesterday's gathering (passed along in email) of Donald Trump's cohorts and the praise they lavished on him. It is beyond humor and even beyond critique ... it is eerie.

 .... So it went on Monday in the Cabinet Room of the White House, as Mr. Trump transformed a routine meeting of senior members of his government into a mood-boosting, ego-stroking display of support for himself and his agenda. While the president never explicitly asked to be praised, Mr. Pence set the worshipful tone, and Mr. Trump made it clear he liked what he heard.

yodeling et al

And now for something completely different ... yodeling among other things ... like what's popular in Austria...

militias on the prowl

While it is impossible to track all the groups that often are no more than a handful of men gathering in woods, experts says [sic] that militia activity tends to fall off under Republican presidents and ramp up under Democrats. But just as last year's election upended conventional models, those who watch militias say life in the Trump era may not follow the same patterns.

If anything, it could be a potential powder keg, if those feelings of having a kindred spirit in Trump erupt into a sense of betrayal if he fails to deliver on his promises.

"What would concern me is that nobody gets more angry than a fan spurned," said James Corcoran, a professor at Simmons College in Boston who has watched militias closely for decades and has written extensively about the movement.

It's hard to keep track of all the individuals and collections of people who have guns and 'pose a threat' or plan to battle those they believe 'pose a threat.'

Tribal living seems to have taken a large step forward in the Middle East and the U.S.

women are stronger than men

 ...[B]eneath our skin, women bubble with a source of power that even science has yet to fully understand. We are better survivors than men. What’s more, we are born this way.

Because I am a couple of cups of coffee short of being awake, and because I am a flip little sod, the first thought into my head is, "Women are stronger than men because men, being endowed with a dick, are far more inclined to find a fan into which they can and do stick it." This, of course, is far from the steadied, studied reasoning that science seems to demand. On the other hand, I wouldn't rule out the conclusion. Just take war as one example ... or other, less bloodied, imaginative adventures: Men raise hell; women are left to sort things out.

Never mind ... I'm on a "fake news" track here.

Just for fun.

But in seriousness, I have always been impressed by the fact that it is the lioness who sets the pride's table by doing the hunting while the lion awaits his dinner. What a spanner this line of thinking must throw into the works of Islamic State and other tattooed swaggerers.

some local politics ... how nice to see you pissed

Where I live, the political climate positively drizzles with liberal causes. "Democrat" is not much of a label, but it's largely as far right as huge numbers are willing to go. This is Massachusetts ... at least the western part of the state where I live. It gets a bit tiring, one virtuous cause trying to outdo the next, be it salamanders or homosexuals or kids bullied in schools, but its alternative isn't very appealing either. No one gets pissed. Everyone gets along, or should do. As I heard a local cop once snicker, "Welcome to Happy Valley."

$700-plus advertisement

What a delight, then, to pick up the slowly devolving local paper yesterday and find, together with the juiceless projections of future goodness and police blotter chaff, an ad that I later found out had cost some $700 -- calling on the comfortable and long-standing representative to get his ass in gear and meet with the people who lived in the nearby hilltowns and, well, represent them in person. Richie Neal's hair and teeth are damn near as perfect as Mitt Romney's  and in all the years he has been in Congress, I have never heard of his voting for or against anything substantive ... something that might provoke a backlash. Mr. Safe Sex, I sometimes think ... which is what every politician hopes to be ... safe enough to get re-elected again and again and again. He has been in office since 1989 ... has been involved in budgetary matters and loves the Irish, at least for public consumption, as far as I can figure out. I see nothing to suggest he ever put his ass on the line for anything. Nothing new there, of course.

A politican wants only one thing -- to get re-elected. Richie has been re-elected.

And yet, opening the paper yesterday, there was a bad-ass challenge -- with a sense of humor, yet -- to smooth Richie's Teflon smoothness. He's a Democrat and yet the dysfunction and cruelty of the latter-day Republicans has managed to wash up on Neal's shores as well. Not doin' nuthin is not the same as doing something. $700 is not chump change in many of the households up in the hills around here. True, there are doctors and lawyers who have bought out what were once farmers and re-peopled the landscape, but still ... 700 bucks is not chump change. Someone is pissed. Politicians who say are not the same as politicians (if they exist) who do.

On the TV the other night, I was watching a show about a dig in Greece and what it showed about the original democracy that flourished there. What we have today is not really a democracy in the Greek sense, said some academician. Democracy then meant that if there were a tax bill, everyone would turn out and vote for or against it. There were no excuses for not voting, including the excuse that voters are being represented by the likes of Richard Neal, whose re-election is as successful as his representation is dubious.

department of adulation

Donald Trump has told Theresa May in a phone call he does not want to go ahead with a state visit to Britain until the British public supports him coming.
The US president said he did not want to come if there were large-scale protests and his remarks in effect put the visit on hold for some time.
The call was made in recent weeks, according to a Downing Street adviser who was in the room. The statement surprised May, according to those present.

That sounds like plausible news to me.

Less plausible but perhaps still plausible enough was the following that arrived in email:

 How draining it gets, insulting the president of the United States, who, of course, is the chief detractor of the office and, by extension, the nation.

post-sophisticate medicine

“The world is heading towards a post-antibiotic era in which common infections will once again kill. If current trends continue, sophisticated interventions, like organ transplantation, joint replacements, cancer chemotherapy, and care of pre-term infants, will become more difficult or even too dangerous to undertake. This may even bring the end of modern medicine as we know it."

That’s what the Director-General of the World Health Organization said last April when she appeared before the United Nations. Dr Margaret Chan wanted to warn of what many deem to be one of the greatest threats to global health today: the increasingly common problem of infections that do not respond to antibiotic treatment.
It sounds alarmist, but it might actually not be alarmist enough.

Once again, a simple scrape may be a prescription for the grave.

the eyes ... noodling

$400,000-plus sunglasses

Thinking about the eyes....

1. A small troll within pokes and prods and asserts: A (wo)man who will not give me his or her eyes and who hides instead behind sun glasses is a coward and a braggart and a liar. Is this an over-statement? Of course it is, but at my age over-statements have a certain savor.

The eyes are alive.

Speaking to someone wearing sunglasses is like speaking to a zombie.

It's rude.

Why should I speak with a cop who has pulled me over for speeding, but fails to take off his or her sunglasses when asking for my license and registration? Is s/he being kool? Intimidating? Superior? Well, maybe all of those ... but let's throw in a dollop of cowardice: The eyes tell tales that, while not entirely honest are at least a bit honest-er.

I prefer not to talk to people who decline to take off their sun glasses. I can see the point when playing Texas Hold'em, but in ordinary discourse ... go fuck yourself.

The most expensive sunglasses in the world carry a price tag above $400,000. Obviously, like very expensive wrist watches, the price has more to do with the jewelry and less to do with function. I guess it's another way of unzipping some psychological fly.

OK, so I can be pissy. But I wonder what it is within that demands the honesty of the eyes. What is it that hopes to be eye-to-eye and honesty-to-honesty?

2. The eyes are alive, but then there is the question of why anyone should feel the necessity to close the eyes of the deceased... stitch them perhaps ... put coins on them to assure that they stay closed. What's wrong with an open-eyed corpse?

Every Google explanation I could find includes the footnote that an open-eyed corpse is somehow disconcerting -- a being that no longer sees, staring into nothing at all, looking right at me. Closed eyes allows the onlooker to speak of "peace" or avoid the desiccation/shrinkage that kicks in ... but really, isn't there something somehow accusatory about the open eyes that see nothing and I am in the direct line of sight?

Kind of reminds you of the old graveyard welcome mat:

As you are now
So once were we.
As we are now
So you shall be.

good and evil

Perhaps the trick is to realize that there is no line between good and evil.

Do good anyway.

read 'em 'n' weep, wuss!

When I was a kid, some, but not all, of the daily news, might sound like this:

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) -- Danish police say a cow which broke loose during a cattle show has injured six people, including four children.

Police in Odense say two of the children were taken to emergency rooms Friday after the incident. Police earlier had reported that the animal was a bull.

Police say the cow stepped on an 11-month-old girl's head and on a 2-year-old girl's chest. The infant didn't sustain any serious injuries while the other girl suffered a perforated lung.

Fast-forward history today and it sounds more like:

A suicide bomber has struck a market in Iraq in a town near the Shia holy city of Karbala, killing at least 20 people.

The so-called Islamic State (IS) group has said it carried out the attack in Musayyib.

Is there anything in this to explain why I have become an aging wuss, unwilling/unable to consume what is offered at least in part because what is offered is not accidental. No matter the reasoning, somehow the two stories, when conjoined, seemed to underscore my wuss-dom.

let's not discuss it

A proposal by an Australian Islamic group to allow "safe spaces" for young Muslims to discuss "inflammatory" issues has sparked a row.

The Islamic Council of Victoria (ICV) said such forums enabled young people's opinions to be "respectfully and intelligently debated and challenged".
But State Premier Daniel Andrews said he was "very troubled" by the idea of a space where people "could be radical".

If you do consider it, you promote radicalism.
If you don't consider it, you promote radicalism.

Still, there is something to be said for considering it.

anti-Trump operatics

Passed along in email .... teerrriffico!

the 'slophonus' effect

When I was little, my mother introduced me to the word "slophonus." A Google search turns up no such word and it is possible I am spelling it wrong, but have no way of knowing what is right. A Yiddish word, I suspect, perhaps because my mother's second husband was Jewish by background.

No matter. The word itself was plump with understandable meaning. A slophonus was a slob in thought, word and deed. A sloppy person with peacock feathers to prove it. You can almost hear the word resonating ... drizzling with meaning -- everyone knows at least one slophonus.

The U.S. president, Donald Trump, is a linguistic (at a minimum) slophonus.

What made me think of this was the crystal clarity of the sentences presented as part of former FBI Director James Comey's formal statement due to be given before a Senate committee tomorrow. The fired FBI chief has publicly revealed how Donald Trump put pressure on him to shut down an investigation into a senior adviser’s links to Russia. Coney's sentences are short and direct, as if he were tutoring third-graders. What a delight after all the thrashing and dashing of Trump's verbal explosions. I could feel myself relaxing with a sigh.

Chairman Burr, Ranking Member Warner, Members of the Committee. Thank you for inviting me to appear before you today. I was asked to testify today to describe for you my interactions with President-Elect and President Trump on subjects that I understand are of interest to you. I have not included every detail from my conversations with the President, but, to the best of my recollection, I have tried to include information that may be relevant to the Committee.

 Mr. Comey's language is courteous to a fault ... he is speaking the language of the country he belongs to .... and perhaps he is afraid the media might have trouble understanding given Mr. Trump's incoherent and fabulous broadcastings.

One small candle in a dimly-lit nation.

zero-star hotel

Gonten, Switzerland

Raphael and Mirjam (R) pose as guests in the bedroom of the Zero-star-hotel land art installation by Swiss artists Frank and Patrik Riklin

Photograph: Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters

human rights and Israel ... yet again

The UN’s top human rights official has marked the 50th anniversary of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories by calling for its quick end, insisting that such an outcome would benefit both sides.
Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the Jordanian prince and UN high commissioner for human rights, echoed the strong language of the UN secretary general, António Guterres, who earlier this week condemned the occupation’s “heavy humanitarian and development burden on the Palestinian people”, which he said had “fuelled recurring cycles of violence and retribution”.... The UN body is frequently accused of being hostile to Israel by its critics, including the Israeli government and some in the US. On Tuesday the Trump administration gave formal notice of its intention to review its participation in the council and called for it to be reformed to eliminate a “chronic anti-Israel bias”.

Trump backs away from climate accords.
Trump considers backing away from Israel-Palestinian detente.

What a cesspit.

Is Trump for something besides a talking mirror that can detect the "fairest of them all?" Has he shaped a policy that might actually become law? Did I miss something?

"philotimo"

There's a word for it, but the word cannot be translated.

The exact meaning of philotimo is hotly debated, given that the word belongs to the pantheon of Greek lexical items that defy easy explanation. ‘Love of honour’, its official translation, is a utilitarian yet insufficient attempt to convey the constellation of virtues squeezed into the word’s four syllables. When I asked various Greeks about their own perception of philotimo, I received very different responses.
“Doing the right thing,” Pinelopi Kalafati, a doctor, told me. “Loving and honouring God and your society,” said priest Nikolas Papanikolaou. "Striving for perfection,” answered actor Kostis Thomopoulos. “Stepping out from your comfort zone to help someone in need,” suggested Tatiana Papadopoulou, a volunteer in Malakasa detention camp for refugees.

A word that often conveys generosity and kindness and honor can also convey negative characteristics as well. But... well....

“What is your definition of philotimo?” I asked him.
“Two to three positive thoughts, one litre zest for life, 500 grams of hospitality, 10 drops of sympathy, an ounce of pride, dignity and your inner guide,” he replied.

Isn't a language that contains words that cannot be translated a language fit for gods?

nothing changes

Based on olcharlie's comment above, my mind went twinkling....

I guess it was around high school -- probably now advanced college courses -- that I ran across the notion that "everything changes." Zen training hammered that nail home again and again. It was exciting, infuriating, joyful and laced with sorrow, and yet it was undeniable and getting my head around that undeniability (not to say that I have) was a chore heaped on a chore.

But having gotten somewhat accustomed to the obvious, I find myself returning to the same point at which I once stood ... and try to wrap my head around the less obvious...

Nothing changes. Nothing sexy ... just plain ... nothing changes.

How would it be possible to get a complete picture if part of the puzzle were missing?

getting the words 'right'

In the long ago and faraway, I used to be a newspaper reporter and as such was assigned more than once to do a story on the home-grown (Springfield, Mass.) story of Merriam Webster, which was the only U.S. dictionary to do its own research and, like other dictionaries, would come out with a new edition with newly-appended words every year or so.

It was a light, press-release-y story, but it was fun and, when I was assigned to do the story of the new edition, I would invariably call up the boss man whose name I have forgotten. We both knew the game of writing the story -- lead with the new words, plug the dictionary, etc. -- so the two of us would zip through that and then....

Because both of us were what I thought of as Republican lovers of language -- words have meaning and for clarity it is best to stick to that meaning -- we were grumpy about the lackadaisical new meanings that morphed to the surface. Eg. "Alienation" once had a sociological preciseness which, if not precisely precise, was at least more precise than the hang-dog teenager whining about whatever hang-dog teenagers bemoaned and suffered from.

The two of us sat on the phone and tried to think of a way to return language to its meaning and clarity. It never worked. The accretions that language took on was quite like the variations of a folk song ... new arabesques of musical phrasing, new words or changed words, new variations of hang-dog teenagers or exultant, I-can-do-it-better adults.

Anyway, I retain some of that verbal conservatism of yore and continue to be pleased when I find fellow travelers ... never mind how fruitless the task at hand. And so I thank The Guardian for...

The 35 words you’re (probably) getting wrong

Have you made a flagrant error, in confusing your alternative choices? The legendary Fleet Street editor Harold Evans proscribes this glossary to solve your language dilemmas

Antonio Gramsci via Chris Hedges

Antonio Gramsci

The following was passed along a couple of days ago and it keeps rattling around in my head ... interesting bubble gum from an earlier time as orchestrated in a talk by Chris Hedges. I am somewhat wary of an era in which "socialism" and "communnism" churned the social pot and the template is then applied to later times, but if you subtract the buzz words, pro and con, the observations strike me as interesting:

Antonio Gramsci wrote his “Prison Notebooks” at a time not dissimilar to our own. The political parties led by the liberal class, because they had detached themselves from the working class, were weak or irrelevant. The radical left had been neutered and had failed to articulate a coherent alternative vision to capitalism. There was a “crisis of authority.” Fascism was ascendant and state repression was becoming steadily more severe and totalitarian.

I had never heard of this fellow, aside from anything else. So much for my education.

"do penises cause climate change?"

Passed along in email:

[T]wo US academics, Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay, recently came up with an even better one. They managed to get published in a social sciences journal a paper arguing that the penis is not in fact a male reproductive organ but merely a social construct and that, furthermore, penises are responsible for causing climate change.

April 1st may be in the rearview mirror, but there's always room for one more... or, alternatively, the U.S. president may need some new octane for his Tweet-mobile.

ropeless ascent achieved

 Alex Honnold has free-soloed El Capitan. The 31-year-old rock climber made a ropeless ascent of the legendary California cliff in just under four hours on Saturday morning, making the summit in time for breakfast. Honnold is the first climber to achieve the feat and indeed was regarded as the only climber capable of attempting it.

ISIS chic

It may be too much of a stretch, but it strikes me that the Islamic State that is blamed for and invites calumny for its violent acts around the world is not so very different from the Islamic State of American president Donald Trump's mind.

A snap of the fingers and men and women dressed in black, wearing masks and carrying automatic rifles forms up and swarms down on an increasingly diminishing peaceable kingdom that is the rest of us. True, Islamic State makes occasional, twisted reference, to the Quran where Trump finds his authority within his own fevered and sociopathic mind, but the militaristic results -- the bombed buildings and the hungry and parentless children (collateral damage in the great good, dontcha know) ... it feels about right.

Everyone's wrong except us -- who said that: Islamic State or Donald Trump?

Black anonymity is the new black.

Donald Trump has not kept a single legislative promise in his first half year of rule. Islamic State, like Trump, keeps up the campaign rhetoric even when the chance to sow something fruitful crops up.

The argument feels too flimsy, but it seems to feel like something in my mind.

Couldn't we just give them Madagascar or Wyoming, put a wall around it and let it go at that?

diary of a tortured man

A story of torture, betrayal and persecution is captivating Mexicans almost 500 years after it happened.

The dramatic life and death of the Carvajal family in 16th-Century Mexico is in the spotlight after a decades-long search for a national treasure came to an unexpected happy ending.

A bizarro story on several fronts.

Grisly, Inquisition-toned stuff, with the power-hungry Christians after the allegedly apostate Jews. The CIA appears to have nothing on the inquisitors ... I mean, really ... imagine having your wife and family tortured in the next cell so that you could clearly hear the screams and hence give up the names of your beloved (Jewish) comrades.

Of course those who have been tortured seem to have little stomach for not torturing in their turn. You might think that such a grisly narrative would put righteousness in the spotlight ... but ... well ... Jews, Gentiles, Arabs, Tutsi, Hutu ... pick a group and the long lineage of screams continues.

yes and no

Maybe...

"Yes" is just a longer spelling of the word "no."

And "no" is a shorter spelling of the word "yes."

It feels right to me, but I wouldn't fault anyone crying, "bullshit!"

the downside of positive reinforcement

The flawed yet infectious notion that, in order to thrive, people need to be treated with unconditional positivity first gained traction in the late 80s. Since then, the self-esteem movement has helped transform the way we raise our children – prioritising their feelings of self-worth, telling them they are special and amazing, and cocooning them from everyday consequences.
One manifestation of this has been grade inflation. In 2012, the chief executive of British exams regulator Ofqual admitted the value of GCSEs and A-levels had been eroded by years of “persistent grade inflation”. In the US, between the late 60s and 2004, the proportion of first year university students claiming an A average in high school rose from 18% to 48%, despite the fact that SAT scores had actually fallen. None of this, says Keith Campbell, professor of psychology at the University of Georgia and expert on narcissism, serves our youngsters well. “Burning yourself on a stove is really useful in telling you where you stand,” he says, “but we live in a world of trophies for everyone. Fourteenth place ribbon. I am not making this stuff up. My daughter got one.” 

To mix metaphors a bit -- the horseshit comes home to roost.

new park, old magic

Here I met Natalya Kirova, a local Tuwa woman who was selling reindeer antlers as aphrodisiacs in the local apothecary shop. Not long after, I found myself hosted in her rustic log cabin. Its walls were hung with animal skins, and there was the ubiquitous shrine to the great Genghis Khan.
In her home left behind by Russian loggers in the early 20th Century, Kirova talked of mountain spirits, wood sprites and local superstition, and recounted a humorous tale of how Khan’s army invented the hamburger by placing meat under their saddles to tenderise it while they rode. Her son is a throat singer, a profession once exclusive to communing with spirits, but she told me that he now mainly performs for tourists.

A place worth vacationing, if I were young enough and energetic enough. Maybe a little reindeer antler would do the trick....

"American Gods"

I was just getting used to the tits and "fuck's" on television drama, but now it appears there's a show that goes the whole nine yards:

"American Gods" has both penises and "the C word" by which I assume the Guardian writer means "cunt." I am simultaneously wary of tuning in to another taboo-buster (it's always a little like children who learn a cuss word is naughty and then over-use it) and at the same time, I would like to see if the story-telling were improved once humanity was given its full sway ... cuss words, gay Arabs, interracial dalliance, the whole Mulligan's Stew of humanity and imagination. The prurience of the American public really is tiring when you get to be my age.

I suppose it will take a few months for any brouhaha to settle down, but I will be interested to see if the show, like Donald Trump, can do no better than over-using what has been underutilized ... or employed simply as titillation for the 'good Christians' who never said shit with their mouth full.

from "homo sapiens" to "homo deus"

An article passed along in email included:

Whether the homo deus species is “human” is a philosophical question, not a scientific one. But Harari believes these changes will come gradually as our relationship with the machines becomes slowly but inexorably more intimate. Our species “is likely to upgrade itself step by step, merging with robots and computers in the process,” he wrote in his latest book, “until our descendants will look back and realise they are no longer the kind of animal that wrote the Bible, built the Great Wall of China, and laughed at Charlie Chaplin’s antics.”

A question that continues to invest my flagging 21st-century mind is this: If everything were perfect, how interesting could it be?

Flagging, as I say.

Brits aim to eradicate grey squirrels

As if the Brits didn't have enough on their plate with Brexit, here is a story about those bound and determined to eradicate the grey squirrel, an American import that seems to be displacing the beloved and diminishing red squirrel of yore.

For the last eight years, Prince Charles, as patron of the Red Squirrel Survival Trust, has promoted campaigns to exterminate the greys.

where white-collar crime is at last crime

Anyone wondering how the rich attained power and then managed to remain there irrespective of party affiliation or moral outrage could find a very good example in the reporting of Jonathan Watts in his latest Guardian piece, "Operation Car Wash: Is this the biggest corruption scandal in history?"

It's written in English.
Yeah, it's Brazil but it has the inexorable reek of anywhere/anytime.

I apologize I could not read it all. I am old and tired. But I can still smell the good stuff.