Althouse

by Unknown on Tuesday 25 November 2014

Althouse

"The Constitution is not a math problem, but..."

Posted: 25 Nov 2014 09:21 AM PST

The beginning of a NYT article by Adam Liptak titled "In Same-Sex Marriage Calculation, Justices May See Golden Ratio."

From the Wikipedia article "Golden ratio":
In mathematics, two quantities are in the golden ratio if their ratio is the same as the ratio of their sum to the larger of the two quantities.

Do the math!

Bob Dylan plays a concert for just one man.

Posted: 25 Nov 2014 09:11 AM PST

"The incredible concert was part of an ongoing Swedish film series Experiment Ensam (Experiment Alone), where people experience things completely alone that are usually reserved for large crowds."
[41-year-old Bob Dylan superfan Fredrik Wikingsson said that on the day of the show] "I was a fucking wreck... Part of me was thinking, 'Maybe this won't happen and it'll be for the best. I don't want to impose on Mr. Dylan. I don't want him to stand there and be grouchy, just hating it.'"...

"I thought the first row might freak him out... I was like a guy picking the next-to-most expensive bottle of wine in a restaurant, which is a very Swedish thing to do. I figured the second row would be ideal. Malcolm Gladwell would probably have all sorts of theories about this."...

At the end of "It's Too Late (She's Gone)" Dylan performed a harmonica solo. "I always detest people that automatically holler and applaud every time he breaks out the harmonica," says Wikingsson. "But I found myself almost weeping when he played the solo. He could have just ended the song without the solo, he wanted it to be great."

Why was I born?

Posted: 25 Nov 2014 08:40 AM PST

Make 2 lists of 5 reasons why you were born, based on real-world facts about why events occurred that leading to your conception. No metaphysical speculation about God's plan or some needed function you are destined to serve. Just things that happened in the days, years, or moments before you happened.

List 1 should be terrible things that you would only feel bad about were it not for the brutal truth that without them you would not be here to experience the value of their nonoccurrence. Then amuse yourself with List 2 — nice things, things you can independently feel good about, quite aside from the fortuity that they led to you.

I'm working on my list and thought you might find it engaging to join me.

One month until Christmas.

Posted: 25 Nov 2014 08:27 AM PST

In case you might be thinking of buying anything at Amazon and you are simultaneously looking for a way to show appreciation for this blog, please consider entering Amazon through the Althouse portal, the link for which is always in the banner at the top of this blog.

Riot control in Madison, Wisconsin.

Posted: 25 Nov 2014 07:35 AM PST

"Only Revolution Can Bring Peace!" "From Ayotzinapa to Ferguson/Down With Capitalist [something]," "No Justice in the Capitalist Courts!"

Posted: 25 Nov 2014 06:41 AM PST

I need to do a separate post about "From Plains to Both Coasts, Fury Boils Over," that NYT article about what happened in Ferguson after the announcement that there will be no charges filed against the police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown.

The other post is about the NYT's artful phrasing of descriptions of protest violence — the delicacy with which it handles racial matters in what is a touching/absurd muddling of factual accuracy and displays of empathy toward black people.

But this post is about the white people — not the media white people who choose this distanced delicacy, but the white people who participated in protests. There's only one, I think, in the text of the article:
A middle-aged white woman wove through the crowd, yelling, "We need to shut this down across America!" and handing out fliers.

The woman, Jessie Davis, was a supporter of the Revolutionary Communist Party and came here from Chicago.
And the slide show ends with a shot of protesters "disrupting traffic" in New York City. This crowd is overwhelmingly white (to appropriate a phrase famously applied to tea party crowds). I cropped out a section of the lower left so you could look at the signs:



"Only Revolution Can Bring Peace!" "From Ayotzinapa to Ferguson/Down With Capitalist [Police Terror]," "No Justice in the Capitalist Courts!/Internationalist Group."

I don't know what to say about that, so I'll just quote something I read in The Daily Beast, last August: "Communist agitators stirring up a civil rights protest sounds like a bad '60s flashback, but that's just what happened last week in Ferguson, Missouri."

Soon came the careful phrases and the submergence of human agency in the NYT article about what Fury did last night.

Posted: 25 Nov 2014 05:11 AM PST

"Soon came the smoke bombs, the random sounds of bullets, the chaos that was almost as predictable as the verdict everyone expected." Thus appeared the absence of human agency in a sentence in a NYT article headlined: "From Plains to Both Coasts, Fury Boils Over" (NYT).

Fury — as if disembodied from any person — did what fury does. Smoke bombs, random sounds, and chaos came. On their own? Did no person engage in the throwing of bombs?  Bullet sounds were around, randomly, not connected to human fingers pulling triggers, and even the guns were not mentioned. Chaos simply arrived. How could it not? It was predictable.

Predictable, not even predicted. Had there been prognosticators, they would have predicted the chaos, because it was predictable. But what was even more predictable was "the verdict everyone expected." Ah, finally! The sentence gets around to human beings: everyone.

Everyone expected? Well, then what was all that suspense-provoking blabber from talking heads on CNN as we waited for the press conference? Were they just lying to keep us from switching back to "Monday Night Football"?

But the NYT tells us that everyone expected the grand jury to decide there should be no prosecution of... oh, what was the police officer's name? I search the text. Late appears the name of the police officer, Darren Wilson. The name of the human being facing criminal prosecution and entitled to due process is tucked discreetly into the 16th paragraph of this New York Times article about the boiling of fury and the random noise-making of bullets.

There are a few other names amid the inanimate forces of chaos and random bullets before we encounter the name of the man everyone predicted would not be prosecuted. Here's Brien Redmon — in paragraph 2 — who "stood in the cold watching a burning police car and sporadic looting." He's the first human being we see acting. His action was watching. And — because it was predictable and because chaos had arrived — a police car burned, as if by spontaneous combustion, and looting occurred, as if merchandise might on its own pick up and walk out of the shops.

"The situation seemed to worsen as the night wore on, with fires and looting mostly limited to certain areas, but seemingly on the edge of spinning out of control."

It would be indelicate to mention any human beings committing crimes. Just call it "The situation." Does a situation have a mind with any ability to decide whether or not to act, or does it "spin" — on its own — right up to some metaphorical "edge" beyond which lies that place called "out of control"?

"But in Ferguson, the destruction that erupted in fits and starts after the announcement was part of a scene of seething anger, frustration and grief that ebbed and flowed all day before the announcement and after it."

Destruction erupted. You see my point. Anger seethed. I'm scrolling far into the article. Finally, we encounter human agency. It's a description of people outside the place where the St. Louis County prosecuting attorney, Robert P. McCulloch, is making his statement. The crowd is listening by radio:
During Mr. McCulloch's announcement, Mr. Brown's mother, Lesley McSpadden, and stepfather, Louis Head, stepped up onto a platform where protest leaders were standing.

"Defend himself from what!" Ms. McSpadden yelled, when Mr. McCulloch spoke of Officer Darren Wilson, the officer who shot Mr. Brown, defending himself. [ADDED: Note the misplacement of "defending himself."]

She bowed her head and tears started streaming down her cheeks.

"Everybody wants me to be calm," she said, her eyes covered with sunglasses. "You know what them bullets did to my son!" "They still don't care!" she yelled. "They never going to care!" Ms. McSpadden then sank her head into her husband's chest and bounced as she wept vigorously.

Mr. Head then turned and began to yell.

"Burn this down!" he repeatedly shouted, inserting an expletive. [ADDED: Other news reports say the repeated phrase was "Burn this bitch down!"]

The crowd then began to roar. Some rushed toward the fence near where the police were lined up. Representatives for the family helped them down off the platform and ushered them away, through the crowd. Officers in riot helmets and shields came out. Soon came the smoke bombs, the random sounds of bullets, the chaos that was almost as predictable as the verdict everyone expected.

Photographed strangely early in the morning.

Posted: 25 Nov 2014 03:36 AM PST

Snow, from window

Another morning for hours of pre-dawn writing from a remote outpost in the north.

It's over! My long obsessive relationship...

Posted: 24 Nov 2014 04:54 PM PST

... with SiteMeter.

It was with SiteMeter that I experienced the soaring highs of blog traffic. The first million. The first 2 million. The spikes! It was the way traffic looked on the web. It was the way I knew what the score was.

But then, a couple weeks ago, it stopped recording new traffic. My emails went unanswered. My effort to cancel premium service got no response. And now it seems that they aren't charging my card anymore. When I blogged about my troubles on November 13th, rhhardin said:
I don't like [SiteMeter] because it slows the page loading. You can see what the page is hanging on, and often it's sitemeter.
Well, I've removed the code now, and if loading picks up, that's great. Quite aside from that, my obsession with traffic checking — a 10-year mania — is gone. Yes, there are Google Stats and Google Analytics, but it doesn't have that emblematic look, the way traffic looks on the web. It's just not the same. I'm on my own now, blogging without checking traffic.

Have you noticed I've changed?!

The slow roll-out of the Ferguson grand jury decision.

Posted: 24 Nov 2014 06:32 PM PST

There must be some expert opinion about the best way to control the public response. Earlier today, we heard that the decision would come later today, and only now are we hearing the precise time, which is awfully late, 8 Central Time.

I presume there is no indictment, because, otherwise, why drag it out like this?

UPDATE: No charges will be filed.

"Chuck Todd's out there... saying 'Obama nourishes me.' What are you doing? Breast-feeding?"

Posted: 24 Nov 2014 03:04 PM PST

"What in the world, Obama nourishes him?  Yes, F. Chuck Todd says Obama nourishes him.  Whatever this relationship is, it's deeper than ideological."

Said Rush Limbaugh today, predicting that the media will work to build Obama's legacy: "It's gonna be fabricated, made up, and the media is going to do everything they can to write it, defend it, protect it, and prolong it.  If that means destroying the next Republican president, they'll do it without batting an eye... Even if it's a new Democrat president, even if the new president's a Democrat and tries to unravel some of Obama, I guarantee you, the loyalty here is to Obama, not so much the Democrat Party, although that loyalty is indisputable as well."

"And so at UVA, where social status is paramount, outing oneself as a rape victim can be a form of social suicide."

Posted: 24 Nov 2014 03:08 PM PST

"'I don't know many people who are engrossed in the party scene and have spoken out about their sexual assaults,' says third-year student Sara Surface. After all, no one climbs the social ladder only to cast themselves back down.... Frats are often the sole option for an underage drinker looking to party, since bars are off-limits, sororities are dry and first-year students don't get many invites to apartment soirees. Instead, the kids crowd the walkways of the big, anonymous frat houses, vying for entry. 'Hot girls who are drunk always get in – it's a good idea to act drunker than you really are,' says third-year Alexandria Pinkleton, expertly clad in the UVA-after-dark uniform of a midriff-baring sleeveless top and shorts. 'Also? You have to seem very innocent and vulnerable. That's why they love first-year girls.'"

From the Rolling Stone article "A Rape on Campus: A Brutal Assault and Struggle for Justice at UVA," via the NYT article "Rocked by Rape Report, University of Virginia to Hold Special Meeting," which says:
The Rolling Stone article detailed what appeared to be the preplanned gang rape of a student in 2012 in an upstairs room of Phi Kappa Psi house, followed by a botched response by the administration. And it alleged that rape has long been an ugly undercurrent of the social system at the university, treated as an unfortunate byproduct of the school's party culture, whose eradication was less important than maintaining the university's well-burnished image.

No Comments

Leave a Reply

Popular Posts