The NRA becomes even more of a farce of itself by appointing Oliver North — disgraced Marine Colonel, seller of (illegal) arms to Iran (!), and illegally providing the money to Nicaraguan rebels so that they could buy arms, too.
Sounds like perfect fit for a gun/ammo manufacturer lobbyist group.
Oliver North named new president of the NRA – CBS News
CEO Wayne LaPierre called North’s appointment “the most exciting news for our members since Charlton Heston became President of our Association”
Scientists are finding ways to extract the sound from 19th Century experimental recording media without actually physically playing (and thus destroying) them. Nifty!
Connecticut is joining a coalition of other states trying to bypass the zaniness of the Electoral College, which has led to US presidents being elected even though they lost the popular vote. While the most recent time this happened (in 2016) is noteworthy for the resulting disastrous choice it foisted on us, this is about far more than Trump, but about an avoidable breach of democratic (small-D) will in a representative government.
The scheme, now passed by 11 states (if CT’s governor signs the bill), says that they agree to give all their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote. This doesn’t go into effect until 270 EC votes’ worth of states pass the compact; the CT bill will bring that number up to 172, well over half the votes needed.
What’s been interesting is reading the reaction to the bill, mostly from folk on the Right who see this as some sort of fiendish Democratic plot.
“This is blatantly unconstitutional!” — Um, not so far as I can tell. The Constitution mandates the Electoral College (the states send electors to actually vote for the president), but not how those EC votes are allocated. That’s why, for example, some states do a “winner takes all” choice, while a few allocate out ECVs based on congressional district votes, etc.. As CT voters would have their votes counted in the total popular vote, their voting rights are preserved.
“The Founding Fathers hated direct democracy; that’s why they chose the EC mechanism!” — While it’s true that some of the Founders mistrusted direct democracy, the EC mechanism was developed more because communication within and between the states was so slow. Rather than gathering and sending in tallies, it made more sense to elect delegates to an election convention (essentially what the EC members are) and have them go to vote a few months later.
“This weakens smaller / flyover states, and means you’ll have New York and California electing the President.” — This argument is telling for what it says (liberal hordes will control the country!) and what it doesn’t say (one man, one vote, is a dangerous proposition!). It also ignores population powerhouses like Texas and Florida.
While it’s true the EC mechanism was also set up to give smaller states (esp. in the early days of the US) a leg up over more populous states, by assigning into the EC count for each state not only the number of US Representatives (which are based on the population), but the number of US Senators (which every state, regardless of size, gets two of), smaller states get a little more oomph. I.e., of the 538 EVs, 100 of them, close to 20%, come from those Senatorial seats. And 100 (or even 50) EVs are more than enough to swing an election, as we know.
That goes away under a popular vote mechanism (however devised), but I’m not sure that’s a bad thing, even coming from a smaller state (population-wise). We are not the assemblage of autonomous states under a weak central government that the Founders largely envisioned, for better or worse, and really never will be again (the rhetorical states-rights federalism of the GOP always gives way to maintaining strong central power whenever any of its own oxen are gored). Just like the US would object to every country in the UN General Assembly getting two extra votes, whether a large nation like the US or a tiny one like Tuvalu, so too this “small states have some inherent right to extra representation” that means the vote of someone in California (or Texas) counts less than the vote of someone in North Dakota or Rhode Island is an unfair artifact of history.
In other words, why, for purposes of electing the President, does Rhode Island have a right to be more powerful, voter-for-voter, than Texas?
“This will mean that candidates ignore everywhere except for the Big Cities!” — This is a variation on the previous, and really has a lot of the “can’t trust those liberal hordes, especially Those People” overtones to it, but it’s got a little different spin. Will candidates just go to Big Cities to campaign and ignore the hinterland?
Honestly, I kind of doubt it. Or, if they do, it’s only a variation on the focus by presidential candidates on the “Purple” states that seem in play, largely ignoring states that are seen to be a lock. Montana doesn’t get a lot of love either way.
But, again, this is somehow saying that we need to treat the population differently — that “Big City” voters are somehow less valuable or less enfranchised than “Heartland Farmer” voters. If all of them are treated the same, tallied into popular votes, then candidate will be forced to make an effort to show that they care about people in Cornbelt, Nebraska, as representatives of the people in Wheatland, South Dakota, etc.
This also has the effect of enfranchising people in states that have all-or-nothing EV allocations but who are not members of the majority party in the state. How many Californian Republicans have you heard bemoaning that their presidential vote is meaningless because all of that state’s EVs will go to the Democrat? Under a scheme like this, those votes suddenly count, and those voters can be energized to participate more.
“This lets all them Illegals vote!” — That’s usually not quite how this is phrased, but it’s the fundamental message.
One thing this scheme does is make accurate tallies of the popular vote everywhere more important, from a presidential standpoint. The all-or-nothing EV allocation at present means that, unless it’s a real squeaker in a state, a margin of error is somewhat tolerable. Start looking at national voting on a popular basis, and those zany accusations thrown about by Trump about “millions” of ineligible voters throwing the election have to be paid more attention to.
But that’s already the case to a certain degree, as the GOP (usually) keeps pushing the meme that illegal voters are everywhere (or at least in liberal districts). If this forces more attention on cleaning up our voting processes in a just fashion — ensuring voting rights, not just making them difficult to exercise — perhaps that’s a good thing.
Does this scheme have any chance of success? Hard to say. People wanting to reform the Electoral College — by Constitutional Amendment or by state-based workarounds like this — have been pushing at the idea for decades. I have my doubts about a state-based system working, but this one has the advantage of not being incremental (it doesn’t trigger until it can actually settle the matter) and not requiring everyone to sign on to make it work fairly (as do EV allocation schemes).
We shall see.
Connecticut state Senate passes bill giving electoral votes to presidential candidate who wins popular vote
The Connecticut state Senate on Saturday voted in favor of a measure to give the state’s electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the popular vote.
Copiers (and printers) are astonishingly complex things, but remain prone to jams because paper kind of sucks as a material.
Nifty article here on how the problem of paper jams continues to be studied and attacked by engineers.
Why Paper Jams Persist | The New Yorker
Who you gonna call?
A former employer of mine did some significant work in Oak Ridge, Tennessee (doing clean-up of the old nuclear facilities there), and we actually had a data center there, so I’ve visited the town a half-dozen times. It’s a pleasant little place, even if the sidewalk rolls up at night.
Here’s a bit of history around the founding of the city, and how they housed all those Manhattan Project people.
How the Manhattan Project’s Nuclear Suburb Stayed Secret – Atlas Obscura
Oak Ridge, Tennessee, once home to 75,000, went up fast and under the radar. But it was built to last, too.
And, no, I’m not saying that Swedish Meatballs should be made with ground turkey (though I’m not saying they shouldn’t be). But there’s a good historical case to be made that Swedish Meatballs were actually introduced to Sweden by Charles XII in the 18th Century after a lengthy stay amongst the Ottoman Turks.
Don’t expect IKEA to start selling Turkish Meatballs, but … well, maybe they could.
The Turkish Roots of Swedish Meatballs – Gastro Obscura
Thank the warlike King Charles XII for your IKEA lunch.
So the general zaniness seems there, and the art style a modern equivalent to the Jay Ward animation of that early 60s era.
What the film clip doesn’t show is whether they’ve managed to slip in the sort of political commentary that the original had in abundance. That might seem more difficult in this era of polarization, but it would be a shame if that element were missing.
New ‘Rocky and Bullwinkle’ Series Heads to Amazon Along with Another ‘Kung Fu Panda’ Show
The first Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle trailer has arrived to tease the new show coming to Amazon Prime in May. Plus, later this year will see a new Kung Fu Panda series added to the streaming service too.
European law around the “right to be forgotten” is pretty zany to start with. The idea is that people should be able to petition to have annoying, inconvenient, or possibly misleading information taken down off the Internet — or, in many cases, removed from search engines like Google.
For example, X is convicted of a crime, which is covered by the news media, and those articles get linked to by Google. Later, the conviction is overturned. That may generate less linkage than the original arrest, trial, and conviction — such things usually do. Now X discovers that when people Google their name, the top results are the trial and conviction, not the overturning. So X sues to have Google “forget” about the trial and conviction, remove the links to those articles, so that we can pretend it never happened. The information is “outdated” or “irrelevant,” so X should be able to ask to take it down.
That’s a relatively straightforward case, but the one that Google just lost is even dodgier. The judge basically ruled that, sure, the conviction happened, but it was a while ago, and it isn’t likely to happen again, and that the plaintiff has shown remorse … so those Internet links to news articles about the conviction should be taken down, too.
Explaining his decision, the judge said … NT2 had shown remorse. He also took into account the submission that NT2’s conviction did not concern actions taken by him in relation to “consumers, customers or investors”, but rather in relation to the invasion of privacy of third parties. “There is not [a] plausible suggestion … that there is a risk that this wrongdoing will be repeated by the claimant. The information is of scant if any apparent relevance to any business activities that he seems likely to engage in,” the judge added.
He said his key conclusion in relation to NT2’s claim was that “the crime and punishment information has become out of date, irrelevant and of no sufficient legitimate interest to users of Google search to justify its continued availability”.
It’s not that what happened was legally revised. Google just has to censor the record to pretend it never happened. Even though it did.
This is not just more dangerous (letting the government decide what picture of historical reality is in the best interests of society and individuals, because how could that possibly ever be abused), but the judge’s guidelines in the ruling are so vague and subjective, that I don’t see how Google (or anyone else) could possibly replicate them.
I understand Europeans’ focus on privacy (at least from business and other citizens; not so much from their governments), but it really strikes me that what’s being put forward here is not privacy, but something Orwellian.
Google loses landmark ‘right to be forgotten’ case | Technology | The Guardian
On the 50th anniversary of his assassination. Via WIST:
I must confess, my friends, the road ahead will not always be smooth. There will be still rocky places of frustration and meandering points of bewilderment. There will be inevitable setbacks here and there. There will be those moments when the buoyancy of hope will be transformed into the fatigue of despair. Our dreams will sometimes be shattered and our ethereal hopes blasted. We may again with tear-drenched eyes have to stand before the bier of some courageous civil rights worker whose life will be snuffed out by the dastardly acts of bloodthirsty mobs. Difficult and painful as it is, we must walk on in the days ahead with an audacious faith in the future.
— “Where Do We Go From Here?” Southern Christian Leadership Conference (1967)
A nation that continues year after year to spend more on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.
— “Beyond Vietnam,” speech, Clergy and Laity Concerned, Riverside Church, New York City (4 Apr 1967)
“Which of them shall be accounted greatest?” Let the churches stop trying to outstrip each other in the number of their adherents, the size of its sanctuary, the abundance of wealth. If we must compete let us compete to see which can move toward the greatest attainment of truth, the greatest service of the poor, and the greatest salvation of the soul and bodies of men. If the Church entered this kind of competition we can imagine what a better world this would be.
— “Cooperative Competition / Noble Competition,” sermon outline
We must meet hate with love. We must meet physical force with soul force. There is still a voice crying out through the vista of time, saying: “Love your enemies , bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you.” Then, and only then, can you matriculate into the university of eternal life. That same voice cries out in terms lifted to cosmic proportions: “He who lives by the sword will perish by the sword.” And history is replete with the bleached bones of nations that failed to follow this command. We must follow nonviolence and love.
— “Give Us the Ballot,” Speech, Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom, Washington, DC (1957)
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood; that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
— “I Have a Dream,” speech, Washington, DC (28 Aug 1963)
Segregation is a cancer in the body politic which must be removed before our democratic health can be realized. The underlying philosophy of segregation is diametrically opposed to the underlying philosophy of democracy and Christianity and all the sophisms of the logicians cannot make them lie down together.
— “Keep Moving from This Mountain,” Spelman College (10 Apr 1960)
We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws, because noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. Throw us in jail, and we shall still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and we shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our community at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall win freedom, but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.
— “Loving Your Enemies,” sermon, Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery (17 Nov 1957)
This simply means that there is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies. When we look beneath the surface, beneath the impulsive evil deed, we see within our enemy-neighbor a measure of goodness and know that the viciousness and evilness of his acts are not quite representative of all that he is. We see him in a new light. We recognize that his hate grows out of fear, pride, ignorance, prejudice, and misunderstanding, but in spite of this, we know God’s image is ineffably etched in being. Then we love our enemies by realizing that they are not totally bad and that they are not beyond the reach of God’s redemptive love.
— “Loving Your Enemies,” Sermon, Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery (25 Dec 1957)
As long as there is poverty in the world I can never be rich, even if I possess a billion dollars. As long as millions of people are inflicted with debilitating diseases and cannot expect to live more than thirty-five years, I can never be totally healthy even if I receive a perfect bill of health from Mayo Clinic. Strangely enough, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be.
— “Remaining Awake through a Great Revolution,” Commencement Speech, Morehouse College, Atlanta (2 Jun 1959)
It may well be that we will have to repent in this generation. Not merely for the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say, “Wait on time.”
— “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution,” sermon, National Cathedral, Washington, DC (31 Mar 1968)
It may well be that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition is not the glaring noisiness of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. It may be that our generation will have repent not only for the diabolical actions and vitriolic words of the children of darkness, but also for the crippling fears and tragic apathy of the children of light.
— “The Christian Way of Life in Human Relations,” speech, General Assembly of the National Council of Churches, St Louis (4 Dec 1957)
Any church that violates the “whosoever will, let him come” doctrine is a dead, cold church, and nothing but a little social club with a thin veneer of religiosity.
— “The Drum Major Instinct,” sermon, Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta (4 Feb 1968)
And so Jesus gave us a new norm of greatness. If you want to be important — wonderful. If you want to be recognized — wonderful. If you want to be great — wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That’s a new definition of greatness. And this morning, the thing that I like about it: by giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don’t have to know Einstein’s theory of relativity to serve. You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. And you can be that servant.
— “The Drum Major Instinct,” sermon, Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta (4 Feb 1968)
The time is always right to do what’s right.
— “The Future of Integration” Finney Chapel, Oberlin College (22 Oct 1964)
It may be true that morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. It may be true that the law cannot change the heart but it can restrain the heartless. It may be true that the law can’t make a man love me, but it can restrain him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important also.
— “The Other America,” speech, Stanford U. (1967)
A riot is the language of the unheard.
— “The Other America,” speech, Stanford U. (1967)
In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
— “The Trumpet of Conscience,” Steeler Lecture (Nov 1967)
We must honestly admit that capitalism has often left a gulf between superfluous wealth and abject poverty, has created conditions permitting necessities to be taken from the many to give luxuries to the few, and has encouraged smallhearted men to become cold and conscienceless so that, like Dives before Lazarus, they are unmoved by suffering, poverty-stricken humanity. The profit motive, when it is the sole basis of an economic system, encourages cutthroat competiotion and selfish ambition that inspire men to be more I-centered than thou-centered.
— “Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?” ch. 3 (1967)
The gospel at its best deals with the whole man, not only his soul but his body, not only his spiritual well-being, but his material well being. Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial.
— Pilgrimage to Non-Violence (1960)
The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.
— Strength to Love (1963)
The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority.
— Strength to Love, 2.3 (1963)
Men often hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don’t know each other; they don’t know each other because they can not communicate; they can not communicate because they are separated.
— Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story (1958)
True peace is not merely the absence of tension; It is the presence of justice.
— Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story, ch. 2 (1958)
To accept passively an unjust system is to cooperate with that system; thereby the oppressed become as evil as the oppressor. Non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. The oppressed must never allow the conscience of the oppressor to slumber. Religion reminds every man that he is his brother’s keeper. To accept injustice or segregation passively is to say to the oppressor that his actions are morally right. It is a way of allowing his conscience to fall asleep. At this moment the oppressed fails to be his brother’s keeper. So acquiescence — while often the easier way — is not the moral way. It is the way of the coward.
— Stride Toward Freedom, ch. 11 “Three Ways of Meeting Oppression” (1958)
Now the judgment of God is upon us, and we must either learn to live together as brothers, or perish together as fools.
— The Trumpet of Conscience (1967)
The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.
— Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967)
We are called to play the good Samaritan on life’s roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be beaten and robbed as they make their journey through life. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it understands that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.
— Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? ch. 3 (1967)
To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it.
— Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? 3.2 (1967)
If our nation had done nothing more in its whole history than to create just two documents, its contribution to civilization would be imperishable. The first of these documents is the Declaration of Independence and the other is that which we are here to honor tonight, the Emancipation Proclamation. All tyrants, past, present and future, are powerless to bury the truths in these declarations, no matter how extensive their legions, how vast their power and how malignant their evil.
— Emancipation Proclamation Centennial Address, New York City (12 Sep 1962)
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
— Letter from Birmingham Jail (16 Apr 1963)
In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.
— Letter from Birmingham Jail (16 Apr 1963)
We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. We must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.
— Letter from Birmingham Jail (16 Apr 1963)
I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.
— Letter from Birmingham Jail (16 Apr 1963)
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was “well timed” in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”
— Letter from Birmingham Jail (16 Apr 1963)
We are challenged on every hand to work untiringly to achieve excellence in our lifework. Not all men are called to specialized or professional jobs; even fewer rise to the heights of genius in the arts and sciences; many are called to be laborers in factories, fields and streets. But no work is insignificant. All labor that uplifts should be undertaken with painstaking excellence. If a man is called to be a street sweeper he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say “Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”
— Sermon, New Covenant Baptist Church, Chicago (9 Apr 1967)
It is all right to tell a man to lift himself up by his own bootstraps, but it is a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself up by his own bootstraps.
— Sermon, Passion Sunday, National Cathedral (31 Mar 1968)
With Selma and the voting rights bill one era of our struggle came to a close and a new era came into being. Now our struggle is for genuine equality, which means economic equality. For we know that it isn’t enough to integrate lunch counters. What does it profit a man to be able to eat at an integrated lunch counter if he doesn’t earn enough money to buy a hamburger and a coup of coffee?
— Speech to Striking Sanitation Workers, Memphis, Tennessee (18 Mar 1968)
Less than a century ago, the laborer had no rights, little or no respect, and led a life which was socially submerged and barren. He was hired and fired by economic despots whose power over him decreed his life or death. […] American industry organized misery into sweatshops and proclaimed the right of capital to act without restraints and without conscience. […] The inspiring answer to this intolerable and dehumanizing existence was economic organization through trade unions. The worker became determined not to wait for charitable impulses to grow in his employer. He constructed the means by which fairer sharing of the fruits of his toil had to be given to him or the wheels of industry, which he alone turned, would halt and wealth for no one would be available.
This revolution within industry was fought bitterly by those who blindly believed their right to uncontrolled profits was a law of the universe, and that without the maintenance of the old order, catastrophe faced the nation. But history is a great teacher. Now everyone knows that the labor movement did not diminish the strength of the nation but enlarged it by raising the living standards of millions. Labor miraculously created a market for industry, and lifted the whole nation to undreamed-of levels of production. Those who today attack labor forget these simple truths, but history remembers them.
— Speech, AFL-CIO Convention, Miami (11 Dec 1961)
If a man hasn’t discovered something that he would die for, he isn’t fit to live.
Speech, Detroit (23 Jun 1963)
On some positions cowardice asks the question, “Is it safe?” Expediency asks the question, “Is it is politic?” Vanity asks the question, “Is it is popular?” But conscience asks the question, “Is it right?” There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right.
— Speech, Santa Rita, Calif., (14 Jan 1968)
Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. I won’t have any money to leave behind. I won’t have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind.
— Sermon, Ebenezer Baptist Church (4 Feb 1968)
The inclusion of a “citizenship” question in the 2020 US Census has been highly contentious — but supporters note that census information could never, ever be used to identify individuals, and so any concern by resident aliens or even illegally present aliens — who are actually supposed to be counted by the federal census, according to the US Constitution — that responding to the census would be a dangerous thing to do are clearly overblown paranoia.
Except that the US Census has been used for nefarious purposes against individuals in the past — specifically, against Japanese-Americans at the outbreak of WW2.
Does anyone actually doubt that Trump would push for a similar use of census data, and coerce Congress into passing legislation to allow such thing (assuming he didn’t just command it by fiat)?
Secret use of census info helped send Japanese Americans to internment camps in WWII – The Washington Post
The abuse of data from the 1940 census has fueled fears about a citizenship question on the 2020 census form.
A bit of history on violence at schools and past perspectives on it.
Anyone who believes that “everyone” has always believed one fixed way about gun rights in America is either historically ignorant or looking to sell you something (probably a gun).
True, gun control advocates are not always historically coherent, either, but the point is that social and judicial views of guns and gun ownership, before and after the Constitution were written, was never unanimous nor, today, inevitable and locked in stone.
The Lessons of a School Shooting—in 1853 – POLITICO Magazine
A thought for an MLK, Jr., Day, from Frederick Douglass:
The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
— Frederick Douglass (1817-1895) American abolitionist, orator, writer
Speech on West India Emancipation (4 Aug 1857)
More on variations of this quotation here.
I’d love to know whether GOP state rep Greg Snowden is being naive or nefarious in proposing a solution to the debate in Mississippi over continued use of the Confederate battle ensign in its state flag that will likely only satisfy the folk who want to keep that tribute to the slave-holding South.
Snowden has filed a bill saying that the state can have two flags, “that may be flown with equal status and dignity to represent our state as we are beginning our third century as a member of the United States.” (With, ironically, a brief pause in there while they withdrew from the Union and fought under the Confederate States).
Ironically, the second flag Snowden proposes is the Magnolia Tree flag — which is what the state used 1861-65, while it was rebelling. So his actual proposal is to use either the 1894 flag (which includes the Confederate battle flag in the corner), or the flag the state used when it was actually fighting for the right to hold slaves — and let people decide which to use, which should flag higher on a single pole, and/or which is more likely to alienate or torque off the neighbors.
Yeah, that’s not really a compromise.
Mississippi could become the first US state to have 2 official flags because of a dispute over the Confederacy
A bill in the Mississippi House of…
We often have boards, sometimes pieces, and occasionally literary references to the games played in ancient civilizations, but actual rules? Those usually have to be reconstructed, and rarely without giant question marks in the process. That’s true for stuff dug up in ancient graves, and stuff that was widespread around Greece and Rome in their day.
Just another reminder of the importance of keeping your game rules with your games.
The Impossible Task of Reconstructing the Rules to an Ancient Board Game – Atlas Obscura
How would you figure out Monopoly with no instructions and half the pieces missing?
It’s gobsmacking to me that it’s fifty years since 1968.
Here are some significant news photos from that very turbulent year, which saw protests in the US and abroad (many of them violently suppressed), continued battle in Vietnam, two nation-shaking assassinations, and a US presidential campaign.
50 Years Ago in Photos: A Look Back at 1968
A half-century ago, much of the world appeared to be in a state of crisis, with protests around the world, the Vietnam War, and the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert Kennedy. But there was some progress to be found as well.
We were very much a margarine household when I was growing up in the 60s-70s — soft margarine in tubs was a convenience, as well as being (per the accepted wisdom of the day) healthier than all that milk fat.
Today, I’m more than happy to deal with regular butter (just as spreadable when not kept in the fridge, which isn’t necessary if you eat it on a regular basis).
Reading the history of margarine — why it was actually such a useful idea, the fight against its spread (so to speak) in the US, and how it peaked then fell — is an interesting glimpse into food fashion and how things were not always as they are today, and won’t be tomorrow, either.
I can believe it’s not butter: The rise and fall of margarine
You may not have seen the commercial in years, but you’d recognize the setup instantly. Sweeping chords play and a day-dreaming, bespectacled housewife sighs as the screen does that fuzzy flashback fade. There are quick shots of vaguely fairy tale locales—an Italian palazzo, stately fountains, a rose garden straight out of Beauty And The Beast—and our suburban soccer mom reappears in flowing gown and sparkling jewels. Then we pan to the best gem …
Once upon a time, you bought records. The tapes (of various sorts). Then CDs.
You bought the music and, beyond certain laws against using it for a public performance, it was yours: tangible, possessable, loanable.
(Of course, if you lost the CD, or the LP got a bad scratch on it, you were SOL. So there was that down side.)
The rise of online music services created — for a time — a hybrid model. You could buy stuff, but that stuff could be kept online. No need to download it. Heck, if you already had music files, you could upload them to those services.
Gradually, those services started pushing streaming content — you don’t “own” the music, you pay for a period of access to a library of music. Once you stop paying, you can’t listen.
There was still a hybrid model, though — the streaming services (we’ll tag the main ones as iTunes, Google Music, and Amazon music) let you upload the MP3 files you owned, and you could listen to them (or the matched tracks from the streaming service), and you could (for a monthly fee) access the streaming service as well.
Now that model is beginning to fade, as Amazon announces that it will stop letting you upload music to its Amazon Music servers; you’ll still have access (when that goes into effect) to music you bought at Amazon, or, of course, to the Amazon streaming service.
It is probably incredibly Luddite to me that I still prefer knowing that I have my own, personal copy of my music files, not contingent on Amazon (or whomever) staying in business, or not changing the terms of the streaming agreement. But by a wild coincidence I was looking today at options for music access on family mobile phones (given our own internal, weird music setup of physical files, iPods, etc.), and had decided to go with Google vs Amazon as the streaming / connecting / music site of choice.
If I had any doubts about it, Amazon just settled them.
Amazon Music removes ability to upload MP3s, will shutter storage service
Take some time to re-download all those tracks you previously uploaded.
I recall this debate back in the post-Yugoslavia break-up days, but had no idea it was still festering. It all boils down to the question of who “owns” a national name, how such names can (or cannot) be duplicated, how fluid borders and history scramble such discussions, and why ethnic nationalism always makes things more difficult than they should be.
In short: the Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) has had efforts to actually call themselves Macedonia continuously blocked in the international and European communities by Greek nationalists who say that name belongs to Greeks, as reflected in their own (neighboring) district called Macedonia. That many (though by no means all) of these folk in FYROM are ethnically Slavic makes this stickier; that folk in FYROM believe the name and cultural heritage belongs to them, and won’t hear about changing it, makes this even stickier.
Why Macedonia still has a second name – The Economist explains
Macedonia gained independence over 25 years ago. Its name has still not been resolved
A neat video on some of the tricky grammar and language used in “Away in the Manger, “Silent Night,” “God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen,” and “Deck the Halls.” It’s always better when you know what you’re singing!
One of our high-rotation numbers at Christmas time, as sung by the incomparable Eartha Kitt.
