Stop the cavalry

Doubledouble dumdum doubledouble dumdum wish I was at home... for Christmas.

This is my new favorite thing. I had it playing accidentally in two windows and it is absolutely delightful as a round song. 

TheSundaeLunch draws Jona Lewie's song.

Freedom's Just Another Word...

I can't honestly recall whether Sixty Grit likes or dislikes Janis Joplin -- whether he'd call her a skank or an artist.  Kris Kristofferson gave her her best song (though I'm sure he collected royalties like Willie did from Patsy Cline's "Crazy").  I picked this song tonight because I can really really relate to the lyrics.

Orwell On Speech

Rabel linked to a piece by Jason Lee Steorts called "Steyn On Speech:"

I admire Mark Steyn’s gallantry in defending freedom of speech and thought, but his weekend column is less than illuminating. It seems to have been 200 percent felt and half thought. Sorting through and categorizing the jumble of quite different examples that provoked Mark’s dudgeon was nonetheless a useful exercise. Here are my undoubtedly boring conclusions. 

When it comes to the legal restriction of speech, or the legal coercion of dissenters, I’ll storm the barricade with Mark. It amazes me that any soi-disant free people tolerate that sort of thing. 

The use of speech to criticize other speech is something else, and the distinction between state coercion and cultural coercion is one that Mark typically doesn’t acknowledge, to the detriment of his arguments. That distinction can get pretty blurry in our present legal arrangements, but in principle the people have every right to make pariahs of whom they will, and to slug it out among themselves, so to speak, when they disagree. 

Still, Mark has a point, and we should ask ourselves what sort of culture we’d like to live in. The readiness to ostracize those who offend our sensibilities is stifling and unhealthy. Except in very extreme cases, we should criticize speech rather than condemn speakers. This is also prudent. Martyrs are popular; better to make an argument. 

On the other hand, I can’t agree with Mark that anything of value is lost when derogatory epithets go out of bounds in polite society. They tend to be bad even for humor, substituting stereotype and cliché for originality. People who used them in different times need not be regarded as monstrous, nor must the canon be censored; we could instead feel good about having awoken to a greater civility and make generous allowances for human fallibility. 

By way of criticizing speech, I’ll say that I found the derogatory language in this column, and especially the slur in its borrowed concluding joke, both puerile in its own right and disappointing coming from a writer of such talent.

I boldfaced the Anglo-Saxon (A-S) nouns and underlined the A-S verbs to emphasize why I think this is a particularly poor piece of writing. Out of the whole piece, only the most vague terms come from Anglo-Saxon: freedom, speech, thought, time, slur, blurry; only two verbs, "slug" and "storm" are Anglo-Saxon, and "storm the barricade" is terribly worn metaphor.

George Orwell wrote in his wellspring of wisdom, Politics And The English Language:

The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as "keeping out of politics." All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find -- this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify -- that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship.

Pushback In Chicago

Reverend Al Sharpton called for a community meeting in Chicago.  The Reverend Al didn't hear what he expected to hear.  And he pretty much wasn't allowed to speak.

Very interesting pushback.

Be sure to watch the video, which for some reason, will not link to this blog just now.

We are almost there

Annie Lennox

This forces me to sing.

medical procedure

Why? Because this is Lem's Learning Levity, that's why, and because you never do know what trouble this might save you, and because he stops with those two o's.  (<-- changed that from "O's" to "o's")

China

winter

Today I spoke to a girl, a young clerk, about the weather feeling like Fall, and I mentioned I read on one of these blogs something I did not understand. The quip I read had to do with Obamacare missing another of its own deadlines, the defense of it was all that would be worked out by the end of Fall, and the retort was, "By the way, it's still Fall."  

I asked the girl, "Is it still Fall?" She brought her hand to her mouth dropped her head and thought. Today! I think. Winter starts today! The 21st. 

"Oh, you brilliant girl. I saw you work that out. You are really smart about scientific things." This is why I'm such a bad photographer because I should have been ready for the biggest smile I've seen all week, I wish I could share it, her whole face grinned like Cheshire cat.

Rabbit vs Race Car

rabbit in rally

Shipping container house

This enterprising gal has converted a shipping container into an abode. She used a jigsaw to cut the openings. I really like looking at these sort of videos and am attracted to the little house idea. I don't know if I would like it, though. Might be better as a week-end get-away.

Charlie Daniels Tells Piers Morgan To Take A Short Walk

Charlie Daniels is feuding with Piers Morgan on Twitter: link

The Marshall Tucker Band were rednecks. I saw them in their heyday, between heavy metal shows. The band leader, Toy Caldwell, was an interesting guy (I thought). Too bad about how he died.

Charlie Daniels solos joins in about halfway through this song:

"Obama says Snowden’s actions have “done unnecessary damage”"

"In his final press conference of the year, President Barack Obama told reporters on Friday that despite the fact that former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden’s disclosures have accelerated the national debate about national security and civil liberties, he has caused “unnecessary damage.”

“I think that as important and as necessary as this debate has been, it is also important to understand that it has done unnecessary damage to United States' intelligence capabilities and to US diplomacy,” he said. “But I will leave it up to the courts and the attorney general to weigh in publicly on the specifics of Mr. Snowden’s case.”

Setting aside, for now, Obama's use of the words "unnecessary damage", begging the question, is there a necessary damage to American interests? It turns out Snowden did not prominently feature in the list of Google's top searches for the year 2013.

This year's National Security Agency revelations have created a firestorm of reports and debates about the state of U.S. surveillance technology and intelligence policy. It set off a brief international manhunt. Entire countries are now building countermeasures to deflect the NSA's gaze. But at least in the eyes of Google, Edward Snowden was hardly a blip on the radar. The search giant's global year-in-review is topped by Nelson Mandela, followed by the late actor Paul Walker and the iPhone 5S. Snowden doesn't make an appearance.

Does a lack of public interest (at least among the giant search engine users) in Snowden and his actions, coupled with Obama's expressed public disinterest in the case, reveal Obamas attitude towards the "unnecessary damage" Snowden caused?
In other words. Had the public been more interested in Snowden, would Snowden be in American hands right now?

It's not necessary to look up "unnecessary", to safely discern Obama's use of the word in this case. Obama leads from behind. Obama is not going to make the case as to why Snowden may have damaged our security, because Snowden is "unnecessary" to HIS own security, and, he has Google to prove it.

Ars Technica, Washington Post

flying profanity

You can buy these things. They've been improved. So now you can give one.

I did not know armadillos float on water, and I've had an interest in those things ever since I saw them in Texas and Louisiana. And caught one! It thrashed around like mad so I spun around holding its tail and tossed it away from me and it scampered off into the brush.

Did I ever mention the time I stayed overnight at the Hennigan's ranch and Mary and Gary and I freaked out because the yard lights attracted insects and the insects attracted a whole battalion of armadillos all aiming at the house, marching upon it, up from the bayou, and rearing on their hind legs? Mary opened the curtain, saw them at the edge of the light and screamed. Very Twilight Zone, I've never seen anything like it. 

This helicopter gets mixed reviews. People use it once and it breaks. Or it doesn't work at all. Others use it repeatedly, smash it into things and continue using it to their great delight.