Distinguishing transcendent matters of enduring importance from the pressures of the day or matters of fashion and taste is more difficult than it would seem. This difficulty may be particular to conservatives and middle-aged to senior-aged people, but it is not exclusive to them, either.
These types are what P.J. O'Rourke called "Republican Party Reptiles." Except most of them aren't nearly as witty as O'Rourke was. But they like their weed and fornication just fine.
Much of what people call "debate" is actually "argument," and much of "argument" is simply "disagreeing disagreeably."
Most people have insufficient patience for an actual debate. An actual "Lincoln-Douglas style debate" would involve long, detailed, nuanced descriptions of ideas which, though they clashed, did so in a mutually-respectful and carefully-considered fashion. Without the sneering, name-calling, contempt, sarcasm, and reductio ad absurdum fallacies, how are we to know that the debaters even disagree?
Modern arguments, by which I mean people disagreeing disagreeably, are typically characterized by a shared absence of a trait that the OP assumes as a given: persuadability. If you ask a cutting question that exposes the fundamental flaw in my position, I ought to have the grace to recognize it, concede the point, and change my mind. After all, you just delivered the coup de gras, and honor requires that I admit your blade has penetrated to score.
But that's not what really happens. What happens is I get frustrated, and angry, and I double down on my position regardless of its merits. And perhaps you recognize that in my behavior, and feel an inner satisfaction. You'd better, because what you are never going to get from me is that concession. Because for both of us, the point of arguing is not to prove yourself right. Rather, the point of arguing is to win. And I'm not going to stop until I do.
Especially so when the subject matter has been politicized.
Oh the disappointment of buying several packaged salads for lunch one day, and then finding the next day that the lettuce had turned whilst in the office fridge overnight.
Biden released this information because he didn't have any damn choice. It was going to get released by someone else if he didn't do it first.
His messaging on the issue has been terrible ever since. (Good Gods in Asgard Above, why are Democrats so bad at this stuff?) But that very ineptitude ought to be proof enough that there's no 4-D chess going on here. Real-life politics is not "House of Cards." It's "Veep."
Sometimes prevailing scientific ideas turn out to be wrong, and better or more refined ideas take their place. Stomach ulcers used to be thought to be physical manifestations of psychological conditions like anxiety and stress. Turns out, no, they're caused by bacteria. This is not new.
Carl Sagan was a hero of mine. He was wrong about "nuclear winter," along with a lot of other scientists. I don't have to stop admiring him just because he was (very publicly) wrong about this, in no small part because he acknowledged that he had been wrong and adapted his world view to the better interpretation of available information.
That's very different than saying "Sagan knew the world would heat, not cool, but intentionally lied about it because he was personally profiting from scaring people into believing in nuclear winter."
ExxonMobil employs lots and lots of scientists, in many different disciplines. I don't know the number, it's surely in the thousands. I'd be willing to bet a bottle of decent-but-not-extravagant wine that ExxonMobil is among the top ten employers of both chemists and geologists globally, including not only corporations but also universities and governments. And of course it employs scientists with expertise in environmental arenas; it needs them precisely because governments all over the world regulate its activities in that arena, and have since at least the 1960's.
I too hunger for simple, bright-line rules. They're not always available.
In disability discrimination law (and religious discrimination too), we often address concepts of "reasonable accommodations" and "undue burdens." And there's all sorts of problems because no one can define where one ends and the other begins in advance and out of context.
There are some basic core ideas, and one of them is that a "reasonable accommodation" does not require the employer to alter the quality and quantity tasks that must be accomplished.
In theory, these ideas also extend out of the workplace and into the realms of housing and academia. Concepts from employment law get borrowed into those arenas, because employment is where the most robust caselaw has developed.
I think the basic idea of "you need to learn X and do Y, and that's just what college is, dude," is harmonious with your point, which is that there is a corpus of knowledge and skills that are fundamental to what college is supposed to provide. Please understand, I agree with you about that. You are right. This is a valid and indeed important interest to articulate.
In academia, we also don't and can't know exactly just what constitutes the core corpus of knowledge X and just what the core corpus of skills Y actually are. We do know that the institution has been given a mandate by law to provide each and every student with an educational environment free from harassment on the basis of a laundry list of suspect classes, so that those particular characteristics of a person do not obstruct educational opportunities. (Note also that a hostile environment requires the existence of an unreasonable condition, something that is severe or pervasive, oriented around that classification.)
There's that word again. "Reasonable."
It's really hard to hash out what's reasonable and what isn't outside of the particular facts and context of a particular situation.
There isn't, and can't be, a uniform bright-line rule about what constitutes a reasonable environment and what institutional concessions are unreasonable.
I'm only (weakly, provisionally) articulating things that might weigh on behalf of the student because it's not a discussion about weighing and balancing and hopefully integrating different interests unless someone is articulating what the other interests are. I'm shying away from saying "competing" interests because that gerund might not necessarily be true. If we only consider the institution's interests, the concept of an individual who doesn't fit neatly into the cookie cutter having at least an opportunity to participate in the institution stops being a discussion, and becomes instead an edict.
Maybe the result is what you say: turns out, college just isn't the right path for this particular person. Maybe it turns out that trigger warnings, however well-intentioned, aren't a particularly good accommodation for a situation like this. Maybe it turns out that the student wasn't acting in good faith and this is a big political stunt. Maybe it turns out that we haven't been told the truth, or at least the entire truth, and one or both of the principal actors in this drama has been deceptive in the way things have been framed. Maybe it turns out that this is a situation where everyone is acting in good faith and there was irreconcilable conflict anyway.
My original point was the institution behaved in a risk-averse way and that is hardly a surprise. As to the core issue of what's reasonable, we've only been given one side of the story. It's possible the institution didn't address the core issue correctly. We don't and can't know without getting a lot more context and other perspectives; and even then we, presumably reasonable people all, might still disagree about what constitutes the boundaries of "reasonability" in that context.
Really really liked The Outfit. I think it's stillnon Netflix? Super tight writing. Not quite sure I liked the final twist, but up until that, oh my yes. I liked it as much as a good caper flick.
I too enjoyed The Northman and oh my was it violent. I mean, it's a revenge story about actual Vikings so you aren't expecting them to just sir around and talk about their feelings for two hours. But still. That last duel was epic.
I neither endorse nor condemn the events based on what I know. Not enough info. We've little means to assess the veracity of the professor's inclusion of those details in an obviously self-serving retelling of the story. Having had a lot of one-sided stories told to me recently that turned out not to be precisely "true" so much as "misleading," my guard is up here. Don't necessarily believe everything that you read.
Saul's comment below is useful to consider.
And, all of that might be true and maybe it's STILL a bum deal for the prof.
She projected an artistic rendition of Mohammed. This offended a Muslim student for reasons that are not clearly stated in the article. Perhaps not out of sensitivity to her own religious sensibilities, but rather out of apprehension that the professor was doing it to mock Islam and thus create a hostile educational environment in violation of 42 U.S.C. §2000d. As described, that seems to not have been the professor's intent, but we only know the professor's version of events and not the student's, and what really counts is what the university was on notice of and when it was on notice of it.
Exxon oil company has known since the late 1970s that its fossil fuel products could lead to global warming with “dramatic environmental effects before the year 2050.” Additional documents then emerged showing that the US oil and gas industry’s largest trade association had likewise known since at least the 1950s, as had the coal industry since at least the 1960s, and electric utilities, Total oil company, and GM and Ford motor companies since at least the 1970s. ... ExxonMobil’s average projected warming was 0.20° ± 0.04°C per decade, which is, within uncertainty, the same as that of independent academic and government projections published between 1970 and 2007. ... Exxon scientists have been warning their executives about “potentially catastrophic” anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming since at least 1977.
The findings clash with an enormously successful campaign that Exxon spearheaded and funded for more than 30 years that cast doubt on human-driven climate change and the science underpinning it. That narrative helped delay federal and international action on climate change, even as the impacts of climate change worsened. ... The company faces more than 20 lawsuits brought by states and local governments for damages caused by climate change. Baltimore was among the first. And last year, cities in Puerto Rico filed a racketeering lawsuit against fossil fuel companies, industry groups and others claiming they conspired to mislead the public about climate change.
These seem to be securities fraud lawsuits, so the legal theory would be that ExxonMobil and its predecessor component entities knowingly published false information in shareholder reports about the effects its products and business activities would have on the environment and thus reciprocally on its own financial performance projections. An interesting theory, one which I think has to come back to whether and how those statements and projections influence decisions of individuals and institutions to buy or sell stock.
ExxonMobil denies the claims, both in the media and in court, and insists its scientists operate independent of corporate influence and in an atmosphere of intellectual rigor and honesty.
Ah, but how about this? Let's say someone at GEICO were to say, "You know, Hurricane Ian caused $112.9 billion in damages. We insured 10% of those losses and only recovered half of that from reinsurance. That's six and a half billion dollars of loss we got caught with, caused by climate change. And it's not an 'act of God,' God didn't pump that oil out of the ground and refine it. ExxonMobil supplied 22.58% of global petrochemical market share. ExxonMobil therefore caused $1.27 billion of our losses in Hurricane Ian. Let's file a subrogation lawsuit against them in, oh, I don't know, Tampa."
EDITED TO ADD: Wait, I think if GEICO had a 50% reinsurance recovery rate, they'd have to sue ExxonMobil for $2.54 billion and then split the proceeds 50-50 with its reinsurers. After recouping attorney's fees and other costs of suit, of course.
1. When it's Democrats doing the appointing and especially when it's also a Democrat being investigated, a Republican prosecutor is a better choice. Saves some political headaches later. The question here is really "When Republicans held the executive branch, why didn't they appoint special prosecutors at all, much less do the politically deft thing and appoint Democrats?" and the response is "Maybe there wasn't enough evidence of wrongdoing to justify even that?"
2. Going slow with an ex-President is defensible, if only to avoid setting dangerous precedents that will turn around and bite you in the ass the moment the other guys are in power. That doesn't mean "never," it means "It's going to have to be really bad and we're going to need a metric shit-ton of evidence."
Prof. Margulies writes, towards the end of his essay:
And here’s the ultimate irony of all this: I suspect that when it comes to other aspects of national life, the relevant actors at Hamline object vigorously to the operation of the unforgiving society. Hamline, for instance, has an Office of Exclusive Excellence, which makes it abundantly clear that the University is opposed to the labeling and exclusion that is the calling card of the unforgiving society: “We are committed to the pursuit of excellence by being inclusive of individuals without regard to race, color, religion, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender expression, gender identity, national origin, marital status, familial status, disability, age, or protected veteran status in any activity administered by the university.” Likewise, the Office opposes the closedmindedness that so often accompanies unforgiveness: “The University embraces the examination of all ideas, some of which will potentially be unpopular and unsettling, as an integral and robust component of intellectual inquiry.”
LOL. I use employer's mission statements and expressions of generalized good intent against them too. Can be helpful in a deposition or potentially in front of a jury. But in the practical world of what people practically think and do, I think we all understand that these sorts of statements are only very rarely actual expressions of actually shared values bought into, believed, and implemented by institutions. Let's call them "aspirational," that way we can still praise them.
Intellectual freedom and nondiscrimination are all well and good, but the real imperative governing institutional behavior is diminish risk. If HR doesn't understand that, counsel will soon educate them. Figuring out where the risks are in the Hamline situation is not hard, and the institution complied thoroughly with the imperative. Prof. Margulies, a lawyer himself, should understand this, but that gets in the way of making a grander point about our culture. My response? If we want to create a society where forgiveness and grace are afforded people, make affording that grace a less risky path than imposing judgment.
Good point. Just about anyone who's ever been married has surely had opportunities to stray, if they'd chosen to pursue them. (Some do, some don't.) But very few of us would have had quite so many opportunities as a rock star. That much temptation all the time would surely wear down anyone's moral fiber.
The last few paragraphs depict Beck as a womanizer and adulterer. I'm not sure that matters to us as fans of the music. Lots of people have cheated on their spouses and partners, and that's not a good thing to do, but it's also not something that really involves people outside of those very small circles of intimacy. Yes, Beck had some addiction and mental health issues but these are not particularly uncommon and especially not so in showbiz. There's a point up until which we can say things like, "Yeah, but that was the drugs talking, he cleaned up and hasn't been like that since," and we generally accept that.
And it's possibly an interesting discussion to have about when a person's moral failures merits boycotting their art or other work products. Beck's predecessor in the Yardbirds, Eric Clapton, presents a more difficult case in that realm than Jeff Beck (and I'm not referring strictly to Clapton's questionable pursuit of Pattie Boyd). But that'd be something of a threadjack and could lead to a culturewar discussion about "cancellation." Maybe that'd be an interesting post for a future date. Today, I'd rather pull out my favorite track from Beck's sensational album Truth, with vocals from Rod Stewart:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNcJGWQsz1Q
And a cover of an American gospel standard he performed with Joss Stone at Ronnie Scott's, which is going to be a mandatory stop for me when next in London:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4N5o3GIGsY
The man could get so much out of six strings.
P.S.: do you realize the identity with the Yardbirds that this website has held as part of its own history and lore? Reading here of your obvious love and affection for the actual group is thus a more than a bit heartwarming. Thanks for taking the time to pen this eulogy.
A teeny bit of googling reveals that "frogself" traces back to an episode of a right-wing comedy and parody show called "Louder with Crowder." (Recall that Stephen Crowder is the guy sitting at the table in the now much-parodied "Change my Mind" meme, which should give you an idea of how not-seriously you should be taking this guy.)
Crowder, in turn, seems to have got it from a tweet by Libs of TikTok in September of 2022: https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1566474143939366913?lang=en. While we might choose to concede arguendo that the root video may well have been sincere rather than being itself a parody, it seems fair to say that this is a pretty extreme outlier that was selected for circulation because it appears weird, and not because it is typical of anything.
If you want to be taken seriously in claiming that this sort of thing is actually being used to gum up the workings of government, please provide a link to an actual video of an actual person actually taking two minutes in an actual meeting of an actual public entity in which this person actually explains the need for others to use "frogself" pronouns.
Unlike science, real history sometimes -- often -- makes for not-good cinema. That's true even if there are germs of really good stories to be told there. Real history is complex and ambiguous and was done by people whose cultures and morals are different than our own.
Movies tell us emotional stories, and the stories audiences enjoy best are of protagonists triumphing and becoming heroes through their moral choices. When morals of ages past are different from our own, that can lead to uncomfortable results. Consider the end of the Odyssey, for instance: It's by then twenty years since the Trojan War ended and there's been no sign of nor message from Odysseus. Penelope is to any reasonable estimation widowed, but still beautiful and wealthy and powerful. Unsurprisingly, she has suitors who offer themselves in marriage. Odysseus finally does come home but keeps his identity concealed, and then stalks and kills all of Penelope's suitors, before... record scratch sound wait, what? To our modern sensibilities, the suitors haven't done anything wrong, so it feels like Odysseus is way out of line here. But that's not how the Greeks saw it.
I can think of no reason you couldn't have a device with a gas burner and an induction top. Might be expensive or not as efficient to build. But this is a fine example of proof that there are very few engineering problems that a sufficient amount of money can't solve.
I can think of no reason such a device couldn't be made attractive, either.
I'm not sure about incorporating a sous vide into it as well, though.
This is great! Tweaking this can lead to all sorts of good things, like homemade barbeque sauce. Love the tip about keeping the solids for use on eggs.
On “Don’t Be a “Kids These Days” Conservative”
Distinguishing transcendent matters of enduring importance from the pressures of the day or matters of fashion and taste is more difficult than it would seem. This difficulty may be particular to conservatives and middle-aged to senior-aged people, but it is not exclusive to them, either.
"
These types are what P.J. O'Rourke called "Republican Party Reptiles." Except most of them aren't nearly as witty as O'Rourke was. But they like their weed and fornication just fine.
On “Notes On The Delicious Art of Arguing”
Exactly. Meanwhile, snarky oppositionism is really good for my follower count!
"
Much of what people call "debate" is actually "argument," and much of "argument" is simply "disagreeing disagreeably."
Most people have insufficient patience for an actual debate. An actual "Lincoln-Douglas style debate" would involve long, detailed, nuanced descriptions of ideas which, though they clashed, did so in a mutually-respectful and carefully-considered fashion. Without the sneering, name-calling, contempt, sarcasm, and reductio ad absurdum fallacies, how are we to know that the debaters even disagree?
Modern arguments, by which I mean people disagreeing disagreeably, are typically characterized by a shared absence of a trait that the OP assumes as a given: persuadability. If you ask a cutting question that exposes the fundamental flaw in my position, I ought to have the grace to recognize it, concede the point, and change my mind. After all, you just delivered the coup de gras, and honor requires that I admit your blade has penetrated to score.
But that's not what really happens. What happens is I get frustrated, and angry, and I double down on my position regardless of its merits. And perhaps you recognize that in my behavior, and feel an inner satisfaction. You'd better, because what you are never going to get from me is that concession. Because for both of us, the point of arguing is not to prove yourself right. Rather, the point of arguing is to win. And I'm not going to stop until I do.
Especially so when the subject matter has been politicized.
On “Own Goals, Email Servers and Classified Documents”
Low-trust culture is real, earned, and in no conceivable understanding good. You and I disagree about a good number of things but not this.
On “TSN Open Mic for the week of 1/9/2023”
That first salad was pretty good, though.
"
Oh the disappointment of buying several packaged salads for lunch one day, and then finding the next day that the lettuce had turned whilst in the office fridge overnight.
Phooey.
"
Biden released this information because he didn't have any damn choice. It was going to get released by someone else if he didn't do it first.
His messaging on the issue has been terrible ever since. (Good Gods in Asgard Above, why are Democrats so bad at this stuff?) But that very ineptitude ought to be proof enough that there's no 4-D chess going on here. Real-life politics is not "House of Cards." It's "Veep."
"
Sometimes prevailing scientific ideas turn out to be wrong, and better or more refined ideas take their place. Stomach ulcers used to be thought to be physical manifestations of psychological conditions like anxiety and stress. Turns out, no, they're caused by bacteria. This is not new.
Carl Sagan was a hero of mine. He was wrong about "nuclear winter," along with a lot of other scientists. I don't have to stop admiring him just because he was (very publicly) wrong about this, in no small part because he acknowledged that he had been wrong and adapted his world view to the better interpretation of available information.
That's very different than saying "Sagan knew the world would heat, not cool, but intentionally lied about it because he was personally profiting from scaring people into believing in nuclear winter."
ExxonMobil employs lots and lots of scientists, in many different disciplines. I don't know the number, it's surely in the thousands. I'd be willing to bet a bottle of decent-but-not-extravagant wine that ExxonMobil is among the top ten employers of both chemists and geologists globally, including not only corporations but also universities and governments. And of course it employs scientists with expertise in environmental arenas; it needs them precisely because governments all over the world regulate its activities in that arena, and have since at least the 1960's.
"
I too hunger for simple, bright-line rules. They're not always available.
In disability discrimination law (and religious discrimination too), we often address concepts of "reasonable accommodations" and "undue burdens." And there's all sorts of problems because no one can define where one ends and the other begins in advance and out of context.
There are some basic core ideas, and one of them is that a "reasonable accommodation" does not require the employer to alter the quality and quantity tasks that must be accomplished.
In theory, these ideas also extend out of the workplace and into the realms of housing and academia. Concepts from employment law get borrowed into those arenas, because employment is where the most robust caselaw has developed.
I think the basic idea of "you need to learn X and do Y, and that's just what college is, dude," is harmonious with your point, which is that there is a corpus of knowledge and skills that are fundamental to what college is supposed to provide. Please understand, I agree with you about that. You are right. This is a valid and indeed important interest to articulate.
In academia, we also don't and can't know exactly just what constitutes the core corpus of knowledge X and just what the core corpus of skills Y actually are. We do know that the institution has been given a mandate by law to provide each and every student with an educational environment free from harassment on the basis of a laundry list of suspect classes, so that those particular characteristics of a person do not obstruct educational opportunities. (Note also that a hostile environment requires the existence of an unreasonable condition, something that is severe or pervasive, oriented around that classification.)
There's that word again. "Reasonable."
It's really hard to hash out what's reasonable and what isn't outside of the particular facts and context of a particular situation.
There isn't, and can't be, a uniform bright-line rule about what constitutes a reasonable environment and what institutional concessions are unreasonable.
I'm only (weakly, provisionally) articulating things that might weigh on behalf of the student because it's not a discussion about weighing and balancing and hopefully integrating different interests unless someone is articulating what the other interests are. I'm shying away from saying "competing" interests because that gerund might not necessarily be true. If we only consider the institution's interests, the concept of an individual who doesn't fit neatly into the cookie cutter having at least an opportunity to participate in the institution stops being a discussion, and becomes instead an edict.
Maybe the result is what you say: turns out, college just isn't the right path for this particular person. Maybe it turns out that trigger warnings, however well-intentioned, aren't a particularly good accommodation for a situation like this. Maybe it turns out that the student wasn't acting in good faith and this is a big political stunt. Maybe it turns out that we haven't been told the truth, or at least the entire truth, and one or both of the principal actors in this drama has been deceptive in the way things have been framed. Maybe it turns out that this is a situation where everyone is acting in good faith and there was irreconcilable conflict anyway.
My original point was the institution behaved in a risk-averse way and that is hardly a surprise. As to the core issue of what's reasonable, we've only been given one side of the story. It's possible the institution didn't address the core issue correctly. We don't and can't know without getting a lot more context and other perspectives; and even then we, presumably reasonable people all, might still disagree about what constitutes the boundaries of "reasonability" in that context.
On “Year in Review: Movies, Music, and More!”
Really really liked The Outfit. I think it's stillnon Netflix? Super tight writing. Not quite sure I liked the final twist, but up until that, oh my yes. I liked it as much as a good caper flick.
I too enjoyed The Northman and oh my was it violent. I mean, it's a revenge story about actual Vikings so you aren't expecting them to just sir around and talk about their feelings for two hours. But still. That last duel was epic.
On “TSN Open Mic for the week of 1/9/2023”
I neither endorse nor condemn the events based on what I know. Not enough info. We've little means to assess the veracity of the professor's inclusion of those details in an obviously self-serving retelling of the story. Having had a lot of one-sided stories told to me recently that turned out not to be precisely "true" so much as "misleading," my guard is up here. Don't necessarily believe everything that you read.
Saul's comment below is useful to consider.
And, all of that might be true and maybe it's STILL a bum deal for the prof.
"
She projected an artistic rendition of Mohammed. This offended a Muslim student for reasons that are not clearly stated in the article. Perhaps not out of sensitivity to her own religious sensibilities, but rather out of apprehension that the professor was doing it to mock Islam and thus create a hostile educational environment in violation of 42 U.S.C. §2000d. As described, that seems to not have been the professor's intent, but we only know the professor's version of events and not the student's, and what really counts is what the university was on notice of and when it was on notice of it.
"
Scientists employed by ExxonMobil accurately predicted climate change by not later than 2003:
Yet, in a surprisingly clear echo of behavior of tobacco companies in for the last half of the twentieth century, ExxonMobil and several other fossil fuel dependent industrial leaders have gone to extraordinary efforts to publish scientific-looking reports and publicity confusing an issue of which they had ample internal notice:
These seem to be securities fraud lawsuits, so the legal theory would be that ExxonMobil and its predecessor component entities knowingly published false information in shareholder reports about the effects its products and business activities would have on the environment and thus reciprocally on its own financial performance projections. An interesting theory, one which I think has to come back to whether and how those statements and projections influence decisions of individuals and institutions to buy or sell stock.
ExxonMobil denies the claims, both in the media and in court, and insists its scientists operate independent of corporate influence and in an atmosphere of intellectual rigor and honesty.
Ah, but how about this? Let's say someone at GEICO were to say, "You know, Hurricane Ian caused $112.9 billion in damages. We insured 10% of those losses and only recovered half of that from reinsurance. That's six and a half billion dollars of loss we got caught with, caused by climate change. And it's not an 'act of God,' God didn't pump that oil out of the ground and refine it. ExxonMobil supplied 22.58% of global petrochemical market share. ExxonMobil therefore caused $1.27 billion of our losses in Hurricane Ian. Let's file a subrogation lawsuit against them in, oh, I don't know, Tampa."
EDITED TO ADD: Wait, I think if GEICO had a 50% reinsurance recovery rate, they'd have to sue ExxonMobil for $2.54 billion and then split the proceeds 50-50 with its reinsurers. After recouping attorney's fees and other costs of suit, of course.
"
1. When it's Democrats doing the appointing and especially when it's also a Democrat being investigated, a Republican prosecutor is a better choice. Saves some political headaches later. The question here is really "When Republicans held the executive branch, why didn't they appoint special prosecutors at all, much less do the politically deft thing and appoint Democrats?" and the response is "Maybe there wasn't enough evidence of wrongdoing to justify even that?"
2. Going slow with an ex-President is defensible, if only to avoid setting dangerous precedents that will turn around and bite you in the ass the moment the other guys are in power. That doesn't mean "never," it means "It's going to have to be really bad and we're going to need a metric shit-ton of evidence."
"
Prof. Margulies writes, towards the end of his essay:
LOL. I use employer's mission statements and expressions of generalized good intent against them too. Can be helpful in a deposition or potentially in front of a jury. But in the practical world of what people practically think and do, I think we all understand that these sorts of statements are only very rarely actual expressions of actually shared values bought into, believed, and implemented by institutions. Let's call them "aspirational," that way we can still praise them.
Intellectual freedom and nondiscrimination are all well and good, but the real imperative governing institutional behavior is diminish risk. If HR doesn't understand that, counsel will soon educate them. Figuring out where the risks are in the Hamline situation is not hard, and the institution complied thoroughly with the imperative. Prof. Margulies, a lawyer himself, should understand this, but that gets in the way of making a grander point about our culture. My response? If we want to create a society where forgiveness and grace are afforded people, make affording that grace a less risky path than imposing judgment.
On “Jeff Beck, RIP”
Good point. Just about anyone who's ever been married has surely had opportunities to stray, if they'd chosen to pursue them. (Some do, some don't.) But very few of us would have had quite so many opportunities as a rock star. That much temptation all the time would surely wear down anyone's moral fiber.
"
The last few paragraphs depict Beck as a womanizer and adulterer. I'm not sure that matters to us as fans of the music. Lots of people have cheated on their spouses and partners, and that's not a good thing to do, but it's also not something that really involves people outside of those very small circles of intimacy. Yes, Beck had some addiction and mental health issues but these are not particularly uncommon and especially not so in showbiz. There's a point up until which we can say things like, "Yeah, but that was the drugs talking, he cleaned up and hasn't been like that since," and we generally accept that.
And it's possibly an interesting discussion to have about when a person's moral failures merits boycotting their art or other work products. Beck's predecessor in the Yardbirds, Eric Clapton, presents a more difficult case in that realm than Jeff Beck (and I'm not referring strictly to Clapton's questionable pursuit of Pattie Boyd). But that'd be something of a threadjack and could lead to a culturewar discussion about "cancellation." Maybe that'd be an interesting post for a future date. Today, I'd rather pull out my favorite track from Beck's sensational album Truth, with vocals from Rod Stewart:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNcJGWQsz1Q
And a cover of an American gospel standard he performed with Joss Stone at Ronnie Scott's, which is going to be a mandatory stop for me when next in London:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4N5o3GIGsY
The man could get so much out of six strings.
P.S.: do you realize the identity with the Yardbirds that this website has held as part of its own history and lore? Reading here of your obvious love and affection for the actual group is thus a more than a bit heartwarming. Thanks for taking the time to pen this eulogy.
On “The Nationwide Ground Stop Explained”
A teeny bit of googling reveals that "frogself" traces back to an episode of a right-wing comedy and parody show called "Louder with Crowder." (Recall that Stephen Crowder is the guy sitting at the table in the now much-parodied "Change my Mind" meme, which should give you an idea of how not-seriously you should be taking this guy.)
Crowder, in turn, seems to have got it from a tweet by Libs of TikTok in September of 2022: https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1566474143939366913?lang=en. While we might choose to concede arguendo that the root video may well have been sincere rather than being itself a parody, it seems fair to say that this is a pretty extreme outlier that was selected for circulation because it appears weird, and not because it is typical of anything.
If you want to be taken seriously in claiming that this sort of thing is actually being used to gum up the workings of government, please provide a link to an actual video of an actual person actually taking two minutes in an actual meeting of an actual public entity in which this person actually explains the need for others to use "frogself" pronouns.
On “The Woman King’s Historical Lies: Why They Matter”
Unlike science, real history sometimes -- often -- makes for not-good cinema. That's true even if there are germs of really good stories to be told there. Real history is complex and ambiguous and was done by people whose cultures and morals are different than our own.
Movies tell us emotional stories, and the stories audiences enjoy best are of protagonists triumphing and becoming heroes through their moral choices. When morals of ages past are different from our own, that can lead to uncomfortable results. Consider the end of the Odyssey, for instance: It's by then twenty years since the Trojan War ended and there's been no sign of nor message from Odysseus. Penelope is to any reasonable estimation widowed, but still beautiful and wealthy and powerful. Unsurprisingly, she has suitors who offer themselves in marriage. Odysseus finally does come home but keeps his identity concealed, and then stalks and kills all of Penelope's suitors, before... record scratch sound wait, what? To our modern sensibilities, the suitors haven't done anything wrong, so it feels like Odysseus is way out of line here. But that's not how the Greeks saw it.
On “TSN Open Mic for the week of 1/9/2023”
Jeff Beck passes away, aged 78. One of the greats.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmO0OZC6Ifk
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I can think of no reason you couldn't have a device with a gas burner and an induction top. Might be expensive or not as efficient to build. But this is a fine example of proof that there are very few engineering problems that a sufficient amount of money can't solve.
I can think of no reason such a device couldn't be made attractive, either.
I'm not sure about incorporating a sous vide into it as well, though.
On “We call it Awesome Sauce: Birmingham Style Hot Dog Sauce”
This is great! Tweaking this can lead to all sorts of good things, like homemade barbeque sauce. Love the tip about keeping the solids for use on eggs.
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...and a second date! Good job.
On “Conservatives Should Rediscover John Quincy Adams”
IMO neither does the median voter herself.