We finished season one last night on Netflix. It pulled together a number of loose ends in a satisfying way.
Photo of Merli (Francesc Orella) from Season 1 Episode 13
Episode 1 (I just went back to remind myself) opens with Merlí meeting his ex-wife in a bar across the street from his apartment. As he talks to her about her new job (and boyfriend) in Rome, he watches police vehicles in front of his apartment. He assures her he will take good care of his 17 year old son whose been with the mother. Merlí goes across the street to talk to the police about his eviction while the wife goes to pick up the son, Bruno, at his ballet lesson. Merlí packs his stuff and moves in with his mother a once famous actress. Shortly after Bruno reluctantly moves in too, Merlí gets a call to fill an opening for a high school philosophy teacher. In Bruno's school.
I'm not giving anything away. This all happens in the first 15 minutes of Episode 1 of 13 nearly hour long episodes. That's probably one reason this series goes so well - there is a lot packed into every minute.
Pol and Bruno (Carlos Cuevas and David Solans)
Each episode is titled after a different philosopher. Episode one is The Peripatetics - and he takes the students for a walk to the school's kitchen. He tells them the Peripatetics thought while walking. A student asks him if everyone can do philosophy. He stops. Ponders for a long time as the students start snickering. Then he tells them that he paused that long so he could think about the answer, and to make the point that people don't respect people who think before they speak.
As he engages the students, he antagonizes the other teachers, particularly one who starts a campaign to get rid of Merlí. The show focuses on about ten of the students - we never find out anything about the black or the Asian student we see now and again in the class. The students all have their own issues - absent parents, over protective parents, poverty, sex, difficulty in school, and one absent student who has been diagnosed with agoraphobia and never leaves his house. Merlí helps them all through the application of philosophy.
Merlí is an inspiring teacher, but a difficult human being. His pursuit of women is out of synch with #Metoo standards, yet he genuinely likes women and sex with them and they like him. His constant violation of school rules and protocol is exasperating yet it's done in the interest of exciting his students with philosophy. My sense is that the writers made his transgressions work out way too perfectly, but why not imagine such a world now and then.
I enjoyed it all - the acting, the dialogue, the issues, the look at teachers' lives and students' lives, all wrapped up in philosophy lessons as well. We also get to see a bit of Barcelona, though mainly the neighborhood around the school and regular panoramic views of Barcelona.
Speaking of Barcelona, Merlí teaches at Angel Guimera Institute. Wikilpeida tells us:
Àngel Guimerà[a] (6 May 1845 or 6 May 1847[1] or 1849[2] – 18 July 1924), known also as Ángel Guimerá, was a Spanish Nobel-nominated writer in the Catalan language. His work is known for bringing together under romantic aspects the main elements of realism. It is considered one of the principal representatives of the so-called Renaixença,[3] at the end of the nineteenth century.
It goes on to tell us his most famous play was translated and performed internationally, including on Broadway. That he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature 23 times, but that Spain prevented a Catalan language writer from getting the prize. Clearly, the name of the school was no accident.
I'm writing this because I know that lots of people will enjoy this show. I can find very little online about the show - basically a Reddit discussion group, but even that is brief. One person who summarizes what he's found out on Spanish interviews of the actors who play the roles of Pol and Bruno.
What I've learned is that there are two more seasons. That many think season 2 doesn't keep up the pace of season 1, and I'll leave it at that.
And I still haven't figured out what the owl symbolizes.
Netflix - and the other streaming channels - are transforming the movie watching experience. We now have available outstanding movies and series from around the world. It used to be that US culture was sent out into the world via films and music and television. Now there's a bit of a two way exchange.
All of you with Netflix, especially those who are in education - students and teachers, - at least watch episode one.
Saturday threatened rain. There were drops on the ground when I finally got round to my bike ride, but I figured I could turn back if it rained harder. But it didn't. Just clouds. Some spots the pavement was wet, other spots not. But the traffic jam along the beach bike trails was greatly reduced. (They are bike trails. It has pictures and the word bike stenciled on the pavement. But scooters and joggers and strolling tourists can make it something of an obstacle course during the holidays and weekends)
It felt so good to just ride without worrying about hitting people or being hit, that I just kept going the seven miles to where the bike trail ends and then turned back.
This is looking south on the return trip from Will Rogers State Beach. The buildings on the left are around downtown Santa Monica.
It rained seriously during the night, but by morning the sun was out again and we met (J walked and I biked) at the Mar Vista Sunday market.
The quiche was at Sandra's Soups and Sweets and I agreed to let people know. Open food like this is required to be kept behind screens. There are zippered openings for purchases.
I pointed out to one of the servers at Vegan Bite Bowls, that the name Buddha Sauce seemed a bit disrespectful to me. He listened as I went on about cultural appropriation, and how I suspect that they didn't ask permission of any Buddhist temples or associations to use the name to make a profit. Or that I suspected they didn't contribute any of their profit to any Buddhist organizations. He listened and said he'd think about it and that no one had ever made that kind of comment before.
We woke up to rain this morning. The sky seems clear again now, but everything is nicely watered .
Ed Rollins called her "the little girl' the other day. I guess that might go over well in white male bastions of power, but to everyone else it reflects how out-of-touch those Republican men are.
Another tried to smear here with video from her college days dancing on a Boston College roof with other students. Again, totally out of touch as the video went viral - and how could anyone think the video would put Alexandra Ocasio Cortez in a bad light? (Here's a post on the original video and the many duplicates overlaying other music.)
Her response was a tweet with more dancing. Infectious, joyful, skillful dancing.
I hear the GOP thinks women dancing are scandalous.
Wait till they find out Congresswomen dance too! 💃🏽
Such a delightful change from all the dour, serious images we usually get of our Congress members.
And you know? Hispanic women under 30 don't make it into Congress unless they are five times more competent than all the men around. As long as they keep thinking of her as a 'little girl' she's going to continue to surprise them.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez isn't the only member of congress to be caught dancing on video.
How about Republican Rep. Sean Duffy from Wisconsin?
Yes, as best as I can tell, this is real, from when he was on a reality tv show. I have no problem with the morality of it, but if some Republicans wanted to embarrass AOC with her old video, well, then this one shows it's her, not the dancing they're attacking.
"The San Antonio Democrat was convicted Feb. 22 of 11 felonies, including money laundering and fraud, tied to his work with FourWinds Logistics, a now-defunct oilfield services company where Uresti worked as general counsel, owned a 1 percent stake and earned a commission for recruiting investors, according to court documents."
Going international, here's Theresa May dancing to ABBA
And here's a Nigerian Senator Ademola Adeleke dancing while celebrating his electoral victory.He is also the uncle of Nigerian afrobeats star Davido.
And briefly looking at other musical talents, Rep. Joe Crowley is particularly relevant because the long time Democratic Congress Member who was defeated in the primary by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
I first went to Dr. E - as he reminded me yesterday - in 1975. His office is in Beverly Hills, but the prices don't reflect that. We came down to LA often enough to visit my mom over the years that I could get a check up every year or two. He's a great doctor - considering how well my contacts work - we get along well, and he plays real jazz in the background. Not only am I one of the patients he's had the longest, but he also appreciates that I come all the way from Alaska to get my eyes checked.
The waiting room had mostly ordinary glasses on display. But there were also several very splashy ones.
Dr. E has gotten a new toy since I was here two years ago - it's a machine that takes pictures of the inside of your eyeball. Here's what I look like inside - at least the way the machine paints it.
The blue at the bottom is the macula. And he pointed out where a few bits are breaking off. He didn't seem to worried at the moment. I couldn't make sense of this at first but he explained it was at the back of the inside of my eye. This picture I got online might help.
"The macula is part of the retina at the back of the eye. It is only about 5mm across but is responsible for all of our central vision, most of our colour vision and the fine detail of what we see.
The macula has a very high concentration of photoreceptor cells that detect light and send signals to the brain, which interprets them as images. The rest of the retina processes our peripheral (side) vision."
It's pretty important.
If I understand this right, the white spot in the darkish area is the macula. Then there are other areas and layers of the eye as you can see in the chart above.
Here's a different view.
I need to wrap this up because Alaska's being given a bad rap again - a storm from the Gulf of Alaska is headed for (maybe already there) Northern California and we're supposed to get rain here in LA tonight. So I want to go for my bike ride before it starts. It's already pretty gray out.
The other day I posted an LA Times list of science events or projects that would likely be in the news in 2019. Science Magazine has also put out such a list. They didn't explain the order, so I took the liberty of grouping events under the same title (ie Climate Science) together. I also took as little as I could to post here, just what I thought was enough for readers to understand what they were talking about. Go to the original form more details. Let's see where the two lists - LA Times and Science Magazine - overlap.
CLIMATE SCIENCE (LA Times talked about the many projects on Antarctica) All eyes on polar ice
If you want to understand Earth's warming future, look to the poles. This year, scientists in two international projects will heed that call. In September, researchers will position a German icebreaker, the RV Polarstern, to freeze in Arctic sea ice for a year's stay. The ship will serve as the central hub for the €120 million Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate, hosting researchers from 17 countries.
CLIMATE SCIENCE Solar dimming gets a test
A geoengineering technique to curb global warming by temporarily dimming the sun's rays could get its first, modest field experiment this year. In solar geoengineering, vast amounts of reflective aerosol particles would be sprayed into the high atmosphere, mimicking the cooling effects of volcanic eruptions.
SCIENCE POLICY A science whisperer for Trump
For 2 years, President Donald Trump has been making decisions involving science and innovation without input from a White House science adviser. Meteorologist Kelvin Droegemeier, whom Trump nominated in late July 2018 to fill that void, was awaiting final Senate approval at press time. The question is what his arrival will mean for the administration's handling of an array of technical challenges, from regulation of human embryo engineering and self-driving cars to combatting cyberterrorism and fostering a more tech-savvy workforce.
SCIENCE POLICY Divided we stand?
You'll need a Ouija board to predict how U.S. science will fare this year under a divided government, with Democrats now in control of the House of Representatives while Republicans retain the Senate with President Donald Trump in the White House. There are the known flashpoints—Democrats challenging the Trump administration on its environment and energy policies, for example.
PARTICLE PHYSICS Seeking new physics in the muon
By studying the magnetism of a particle called the muon, physicists hope to find results this year that could point to new particles or forces, something they have craved for decades. Scientists at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Illinois, are examining whether the muon—a heavier and shorter-lived cousin of the electron—is more magnetic than theory predicts.
BIOPHYSICS A fine-grained look inside cells
In cell biology, higher resolution means more gets revealed. Now, scientists are ready to use new combinations of tools and techniques to provide close-up looks at components inside cells in unprecedented detail, and in 3D. Already, researchers can analyze DNA, proteins, RNA, and epigenetic marks in single cells. This year, multidisciplinary teams plan to combine those methods with advances in cryoelectron tomography, labeling techniques to trace molecules, and other types of microscopy to see subcellular structures and processes.
BIOTECHNOLOGY New GM mosquitoes take off
The first release of genetically modified (GM) mosquitoes in Africa is set to happen in Burkina Faso this year, an initial step in a planned "gene drive" strategy against malaria. It will be the first release of GM mosquitoes of the genus Anopheles, which transmits the parasite responsible for the disease. The gene drive approach, under development at the nonprofit consortium Target Malaria, would spread mutations through the wild population that knock out key fertility genes or reduce the proportion of female insects, which transmit disease.
CONSERVATION Nations size up biodiversity
Three years in the making, a $2.4 million assessment of Earth's biodiversity and ecosystems will be published in May. By evaluating trends over 50 years in indicators such as species extinctions and extent of marine protected areas, it will chart progress toward international goals on biodiversity conservation—and, in many places, how far short the world is falling.
SPACE SCIENCE (LA Times talks about New Horizon) The next planetary mission
In July, NASA will chart its next major step in planetary science when it selects the next billion-dollar mission under its New Frontiers program. The agency will choose between two finalists. Dragonfly would send a semiautonomous quad-copter to fly across the surface of Titan, the saturnian moon sculpted by rivers of liquid methane. The copter would search for clues of chemical reactions that could lead to life. The Comet Astrobiology Exploration Sample Return mission would return gases and ice from the nucleus of the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
RESEARCH ETHICS A push to return museum holdings
Researchers are beginning new efforts to return bones and cultural artifacts collected for study and as museum specimens to the peoples from whom they were obtained, often without consent. Expect renewed debate on this issue, as after centuries of exploitative collecting, some researchers use new methods to collaborate with those communities, and also expand efforts to return objects of art.
#METOO (I'm grouping this with other ethics related ones) New rights for alleged harassers
This year, the U.S. Department of Education may finalize controversial proposed rules that would reduce universities' liability for policing sexual harassment and sexual assault and give more rights to the accused. The regulations, proposed in November 2018, would change how institutions investigate such allegations under the landmark 1972 law known as Title IX. They wouldn't be responsible for investigating most off-campus incidents of harassment or assault, and the standard of evidence for confirming allegations of on-campus misconduct could rise.
BIOETHICS China eyes bioethics overhaul (LA Times does cover this one)
China is likely to tighten its rules for genetic engineering of humans, including the creation of heritable traits, in the wake of an uproar over such work in 2018. A Chinese scientist named He Jiankui announced in November 2018 that he modified a gene in embryos that led to twin baby girls.
LIVESTOCK AGRICULTURE Disease crisis looms for swine
Pig farmers—and perhaps some bacon lovers—will anxiously scan the headlines this year for news of African swine fever (ASF). Harmless to humans, the viral disease is highly infectious and lethal among pigs, causing serious economic damage through culls and trade bans.
Seems this one is more geared to scientists and the LA Times list toward a lay audience, which makes perfect sense.
Here's the story headline in the Anchorage Daily News* (ADN) this morning that got my attention here:
For my blind readers whose equipment can't read words in images, the headline is:
"DEPUTIES SHOT LION THAT KILLED INTERN AT WILDLIFE CENTER 8 TIMES"
"Lion that killed intern at wildlife center 8 times" - That's one tough intern. Elements Of Style is one of the most used books on English writing style. It may be a bit outdated here and there, but its succinct list of rules of grammar and style make it a great way to keep your prose concise and understandable. It's available free as a PDF on line. From page 36:
"20. Keep related words together. The position of the words in a sentence is the principal means of showing their relationship. Confusion and ambiguity result when words are badly placed. The writer must, therefore, bring together the words and groups of words that are related in thought and keep apart those that are not so related."
They then give lots of examples, but this one is as good as any of them why this is important.
So how do we make it clear that the deputies shot the lion eight times, not that the lion killed the intern eight times? Here's what other headline writers wrote:
*I often can't find links to stories like this one that the ADN has rounded up from other sources, that's why I put in the screenshot.
I'd also note that in the 1979 Introduction is this advice on BREAKING rules:
"It is an old observation," he wrote, "that the best writers sometimes disregard the rules of rhetoric. When they do so, however, the reader will usually find in the sentence some compensating merit, attained at the cost of the violation. Unless he is certain of doing as well, he will probably do best to follow the rules."
There seem to be fewer notable people born in 1919. World War I had ended in November1918. There had been a big influenza epidemic in 1918 as well. Births dropped significantly in 1919.
Someone born in 1919 would be ten when the stock market crashed, spend their adolescence during the depression, and start their twenties as WW II broke out. Maybe that explains why there are fewer notables compared to other years.
I've only picked out a few folks born in 1919. What has struck me since I first started doing "famous people born" posts, is thinking about a group of people who would have been in the same school year had they all lived in the same neighborhood. So try to imagine these people being classmates together at some school. Did any of these people know each other? Ever meet?
I've put them in order of when they were born in 1919 from the oldest (at least at birth) to the youngest. It's also sobering to see how some lived much shorter lives than others.
"American writer known for his widely read novel, The Catcher in the Rye. Following his early success publishing short stories and The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger led a very private life for more than a half-century. He published his final original work in 1965 and gave his last interview in 1980."
"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them. They’re quitee touchy about anything like that, especially my father. They’re nice and all - I’m not saying that - but they’re also touchy as hell. Besides, I’m not going to tell you my whole goodam autobiography or anything. I’ll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me last Christmas just before I got pretty run-down and had to come out and take it easy. I mean that’s all I told D.B. about, and he’s my brother and all. He’s in Hollywood. That isn’t too far from this crumby place, and he comes over and visits me practically every week end. He’s going to drive me home when I go home next month maybe. He just got a Jaguar. One of those little English jobs that can do around two hundred miles an hour. It cost him damn near four thousand bucks. He’s got a lot of dough, now. He didn’t use to. He used to be just a regular writer, when he was home. He wrote this terrific book of short stories, The Secret Goldfish, in case you never heard of him. The best one in it was «‘The Secret Goldfish.’ It was about this little kid that wouldn’t let anybody look at his goldfish because he’d bought it with his own money. It killed me. Now he’s out in Hollywood, D.B., being a prostitute. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s the movies. Don’t even mention them to me."
"The first African American to play in Major League Baseball (MLB) in the modern era.[2] Robinson broke the baseball color line when the Brooklyn Dodgers started him at first base on April 15, 1947. When the Dodgers signed Robinson, they heralded the end of racial segregation in professional baseball that had relegated black players to the Negro leagues since the 1880s.[3] Robinson was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962.[4]"
"Born in Budapest, Eva aspired to acting from the age of 4. She began studying at 15, but her parents thought acting was too vulgar a profession and forced her to withdraw. Two years later, the 5-foot-2-inch beauty met a Swedish-born Hollywood physician at a party. They married in 1939 and moved to California. , ,
Described as the most down-to-earth of the Gabor sisters, Eva nevertheless had a lot in common with her many-times-married siblings, Zsa Zsa and Magda. Eva, who married and divorced at least four times, was said to have coined the phrase, "Marriage is too interesting an experiment to be tried only once or twice."
They were all entertainers. And they all possessed the unmistakably breezy Gabor style. When introduced to President Lyndon B. Johnson, Eva Gabor greeted him in her trademark Hungarian accent: 'Hello, Mr. President, darling.'"
" For a mild-mannered man whose music was always easy on the ear, Nat King Cole managed to be a figure of considerable controversy during his 30 years as a professional musician. From the late '40s to the mid-'60s, he was a massively successful pop singer who ranked with such contemporaries as Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, and Dean Martin. He shared with those peers a career that encompassed hit records, international touring, radio and television shows, and appearances in films. But unlike them, he had not emerged from a background as a band singer in the swing era. Instead, he had spent a decade as a celebrated jazz pianist, leading his own small group."
"Madalyn Murray O'Hair (née Mays; )[1] was an American activist supporting atheism and separation of church and state. In 1963 she founded American Atheists and served as its president to 1986, after which her son Jon Garth Murray succeeded her. She created the first issues of American Atheist Magazine.
O'Hair is best known for the Murray v. Curlett lawsuit, which challenged the policy of mandatory prayers and Bible reading in Baltimore public schools, in which she named her first son William J. Murray as plaintiff. Consolidated with Abington School District v. Schempp (1963), it was heard by the United States Supreme Court, which ruled that official Bible-reading in American public schools was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court had prohibited officially sponsored prayer in schools in Engel v. Vitale (1962) on similar grounds. Through American Atheists, O'Hair filed numerous other suits on issues of separation of church and state."
Pete Seeger May 3, 1919 - January 27, 2014 (94)
In 1938, he settled in New York City and eventually met Alan Lomax, Woody Guthrie, Aunt Molly Jackson, Lead Belly, and others. The quality of music coming from this group immediately captured his attention. He assisted Alan Lomax at the Library of Congress’ Archive of Folk Song and was exposed to a wonderful array of traditional American music. Many in this group of musicians eventually formed the Almanac Singers in 1940. In addition to Pete, the group included Lee Hays, Woody Guthrie, Bess Lomax, Sis Cunningham, Mill Lampell, Arthur Stern, and others. They lived in a communal home, “The Almanac House,” in New York. The group performed for gatherings, picket lines, and any place where they could lend their voices in support of the social causes they believed in. Later, after World War II, many of the same people became involved in the musical organizations People’s Songs and People’s Artists.
His best-known songs include "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" (with Joe Hickerson), "If I Had a Hammer (The Hammer Song)" (with Lee Hays of the Weavers), and "Turn! Turn! Turn!"
Liberace May 16, 1919 - February 4, 1987 ( 67)
American pianist, singer and actor.[2] A child prodigy and the son of Polish and Italian immigrants, Liberace enjoyed a career spanning four decades of concerts, recordings, television, motion pictures, and endorsements. At the height of his fame, from the 1950s to the 1970s, Liberace was the highest-paid entertainer in the world,[3] with established concert residencies in Las Vegas, and an international touring schedule. Liberace embraced a lifestyle of flamboyant excess both on and off stage, acquiring the nickname "Mr. Showmanship".
Dame Margot Fonteyn, DBE (18 May 1919 – 21 February 1991), stage name of Margaret Evelyn de Arias, was an English ballerina. She spent her entire career as a dancer with the Royal Ballet (formerly the Sadler's Wells Theater Company), eventually being appointed prima ballerina assoluta of the company by Queen Elizabeth II. Beginning ballet lessons at the age of four, she studied in England and China, where her father was transferred for his work. Her training in Shanghai was with George Goncharov, contributing to her continuing interest in Russian ballet. Returning to London at the age of 14, she was invited to join the Vic-Wells Ballet School by Ninette de Valois. She succeeded Alicia Markova as prima ballerina of the company in 1935. The Vic-Wells choreographer, Sir Frederick Ashton, wrote numerous parts for Fonteyn and her partner, Robert Helpmann, with whom she danced from the 1930s to the 1940s.
Best-known internationally as the first man to climb Mt. Everest in May 1953 with Tenzing Norgay, for the last 50 years he has devoted himself to environmental and humanitarian efforts that have made a profound difference to communities in Nepal where his famous summiting was achieved.
American politician and the 45th Governor of Alabama, a position he occupied for four terms, during which he promoted "low-grade industrial development, low taxes, and trade schools".[1] He sought the United States presidency as a Democrat three times, and once as an American Independent Party candidate, unsuccessfully each time. He is best remembered for his staunch segregationist and populist views.[2][3][4] Wallace famously opposed desegregation and supported the policies of "Jim Crow" during the Civil Rights Movement, declaring in his 1963 Inaugural Address that he stood for "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever".[5]
I'm offering this video, because I was at this talk. (The actual date is January 10,1964) I came early to be sure to get a seat. The first several rows were already filled with black students. Wallace was known as the racist governor of Alabama who opposed integration. UCLA was a relatively liberal California college. It was going to be tense. But Wallace used charm and humor to win over the audience quickly - even the front few rows. We didn't agree with him, but laughter created a human connection. It was an important lesson for me about preconceptions, my notions about evil people, and how people who violently disagree on fundamental issues, nevertheless can communicate. It also helped me understand why Alabamans voted for him. I absolutely do not endorse most of the comments under this video on Youtube.
He slid down banisters, dated movie stars and wore a red rose in his lapel. Pierre Elliott Trudeau is arguably the most charismatic prime minister in Canada's history. But he was more than just charisma - Trudeau helped shape Canada with his vision of a unified, bilingual, multicultural "just society." Throughout his 16 years as prime minister, he faced some heavy criticism. But when Trudeau died on Sept. 28, 2000, the nation mourned the man who, in the words of one biographer, "haunts us still."
He was also the father of Canada's current prime minister.
Doris Lessing's body of work comprises around 50 books and spans several genres. Her writing is characterized by penetrating studies of living conditions in the 20th century, behavioral patterns, and historical developments. Her most experimental novel, 'The Golden Notebook', from 1962, is a study of a woman's psyche and life situation, the lot of writers, sexuality, political ideas, and everyday life. Some of Doris Lessing's books reach into the future. Among other things, she portrays our civilization's final hour from the perspective of an extraterrestrial observer.
"Anna meets her friend Molly in the summer of 1957 after a separation
THE two women were alone in the London flat. 'The point is,' said Anna, as her friend came back from the telephone on the landing, 'the point is, that as far as I can see, everything's cracking up.'
Molly was a woman much on the telephone. When it rang she had just enquired: 'Well, what's the gossip?' Now she said, 'That's Richard, and he's coming over. It seems today's his only free moment for the next month. Or so he insists.'
'Well I'm not leaving,' said Anna.
'No, you stay just where you are.'
Molly considered her own appearance-she was wearing trousers and a sweater, both the worse for wear. 'He'll have to take me as I come,' she concluded, and sat down by the window. 'He wouldn't say what it's about-another crisis with Marion, I suppose.'
'Didn't he write to you?' asked Anna, cautious.
'Both he and Marion wrote-ever such bonhomous letters. Odd, isn't it?'
This odd, isn't it? was the characteristic note of the intimate conversations they designated gossip. But having struck the note, Molly swerved off with: 'It's no use talking now, because he's coming right over, he says.'
'He'll probably go when he sees me here,' said Anna, cheerfully, but slightly aggressive. Molly glanced at her, keenly, and said: 'Oh, but why?'
It had always been understood that Anna and Richard disliked each other; and before Anna had always left when Richard was expected. Now Molly said: 'Actually I think he rather likes you, in his heart of hearts. The point is, he's committed to liking me, on principle-he's such a fool he's always got to either like or dislike someone, so all the dislike he won't admit he has for me gets pushed off on to you.'"
Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (1919-80), king of Iran (1941-1979), was born in Tehran on October 26, 1919, the eldest son of Reza Shah. He completed his primary school in Switzerland. He returned to Iran in 1935, and enrolled in a Tehran military school, from which he graduated in 1938.. . .
He replaced his father, Reza Shah, on the throne on September 16, 1941, shortly before his 22nd birthday. He continued the reform policies of his father, but a contest for control of the government soon erupted between the shah and an older professional politician, the nationalistic Mohammad Mosaddeq. . .
By the mid-1970s the Shah reigned amidst widespread discontent caused by the continuing repressiveness of his regime, socioeconomic changes that benefited some classes at the expense of others, and the increasing gap between the ruling elite and the disaffected populace. Islamic leaders, particularly the exiled cleric Ayatollah Khomeini, were able to focus this discontent with a populist ideology tied to Islamic principles and calls for the overthrow of the shah. The Shah's government collapsed following widespread uprisings in 1978 -1979 and consequently an Islamic Republic succeeded his regime.
Russian soldier, best known as AK-47 inventor. a Russian general, inventor, military engineer and small arms designer. He is most famous for developing the AK-47 assault rifle and its improvements, the AKM and AK-74, as well as the PK machine gun and RPK light machine gun.
As I said the other day (actually it was just yesterday) news stories fly by so fast and superficially, that there's hardly time to put all the pieces together. We get random puzzle pieces, bits of news, then they either disappear or get thrown into a big messy pile. So no wonder people don't understand much. Any story that requires remembering sixteen other stories that whizzed past, won't have any more meaning than the headline or talking point used to frame it by whatever news outlet one attends to.
Antipathy toward time rooted in the very human combination of vanity and existential dread is perhaps the most forgivable type of chronophobia. But more dangerous forms of time denial pervade our society. Fiscal years and congressional terms enforce a blinkered view of the future. Short-term thinkers are rewarded with bonuses and reelection, while those who dare to take seriously our responsibility to future generations find themselves out of office. Even two years of forethought seem beyond the capacity of legislators these days, when stop-gap spending measures have become the norm. Institutions that do aspire to the long view — state and national parks, public libraries and universities — are increasingly seen as taxpayer burdens. . .
. . . We lack a sense of temporal proportion — the durations of the great chapters in Earth’s history, the rates of change during previous intervals of climate instability, the intrinsic time-scales of “natural capital” like groundwater systems.
We are, in effect, time illiterate, and this ignorance of planetary time undermines any claims we may make to modernity. We are navigating recklessly toward our future using conceptions of time as primitive as the pre-Copernican view of the universe. We think we’re the center of it all, unable to see either the past or future in proper perspective.
Another LA Times story, by Susanne Rust, tries to be timeful, after this year of horrific California fires, to look at the history of fires and other catastrophic events in California:
In 1860, a young botanist raised in New York and schooled in Connecticut found himself on the payroll of the newly formed California Division of Mines and Geology. His job: Roam the vast, new state, taking samples and observations of plants and animals.
Over four years journeying across California, William Brewer witnessed torrential rains that turned the Central Valley into a vast, white-capped lake; intolerable heat waves that made the “fats of our meats run away in spontaneous gravy;” violent earthquakes; and fires he described as “great sheets of flame, extending over acres.”
He, like explorers, journalists and settlers before him, wondered whether people could permanently settle in California, said David Igler, a professor of history at UC Irvine.
“People were flabbergasted by what was happening,” said Igler, referring to the droughts, floods and quakes of the mid-1800s. “They wondered whether this was a place where we could even really settle and where agriculture could be maintained.”
She writes about how the Indians who inhabited California lived in small groups that moved around and practiced controlled burns until the Spanish outlawed them. The Spanish. They were the landlords of California for a while before the US kicked them out through force and violence. But that's another historical amnesia when we talk about immigration.
And I began this morning working my way through another chapter of Seth Abramson's Proof of Collusion. That's a book that tries to put all the pieces together in the Trump-Russia collusion story. I've posted about that book already. It's an example of taking years of news stories and organizing them into sensible, in depth, cohesive organization of the facts. In the chapter today he writes about how Michael Cohen was a school boy friend of Felix Sater, who immigrated with his family from the Soviet Union when he was eight.
Abramson's book averages about five or six footnotes per page, so even Abramson is only telling us part of the story, but surely a lot more than most of us know despite the non-stop reports interspersed with click-bait and stories about the homeless, immigrants, murders, football players, weekly movie box-office earnings, and other relatively random bits of infotainment. So I checked footnote 78 from that chapter - a September 2017 article in the Nation on Felix Sater, by Bob Dreyfuss.
"Of all the characters caught up in Russiagate, none come close to Sater for having a decades-long record as a larger-than-life, outside-the-law, spy agency-linked wheeler-dealer from the pages of a John le Carré novel. His past record includes a conviction for lacerating a man’s face with a broken margarita glass in a bar brawl and his involvement in a multimillion-dollar stock fraud and money-laundering scheme. Despite that record, which came before he worked with Trump, Sater spent nearly a decade working with the Trump Organization in search of deals in Russia and other former Soviet republics. But on August 28, Sater made the front pages of the Times and The Washington Post, thanks to leaked copies of e-mails that he sent in late 2015 and early 2016 to Cohen, concerning Sater’s efforts to work with a group of Russian investors to set up a flagship Trump property in the Russian capital.
In language that Cohen himself described to the Times as “colorful,” Sater seemed nearly beside himself as he reported on his work in Moscow on behalf of Trump:
“'Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it,” wrote Sater. “I will get all of [Vladimir] Putins [sic] team to buy in on this, I will manage this process.… I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected.” Echoing a line that would later become Trump’s own description of why he and Putin might get along, Sater wrote that the Russian leader “only wants to deal with a pragmatic leader, and a successful business man is a good candidate for someone who knows how to deal.'”
Netflix and Prime and HBO should be doing these stories now, when they can make a difference. These characters and their misbehavior are as colorful and bizarre as anything they have up now. And learning about who all these people are now would help Congress members and voters understand how outrageous the Republic Congress' lack of integrity is.
All the President's Men - the Watergate tale - came out in June 1974 - not quite two months before Nixon resigned. The movie didn't come out until 1976.
Proof of Collusion came out November 13, 2018. But the Trump story is much less focused than the Watergate burglary. Trump's tentacles go out long into the past. His crimes and corruptions are myriad. His ties to Russia, Ukraine, and other nations - through his obsessions with putting up giant phallic buildings with with his name on them - require much more patience and attention from readers and viewers. And Bernstein and Woodward were better known as the two reporters who had been keeping the story alive.
Yes, long term, comprehensive knowledge packaged so that United States consumers of news can make sense of what is happening - in detail - is severely lacking. Instead of presenting the United States viewers with the picture of the completed puzzle (like on the box of jigsaw puzzles), or even sections of the puzzle as the pieces get pieced together, we get shown on piece at a time and little or none of how it fits into the larger picture.
The optimistic view of all this would be that technology has been changing so fast we haven't yet figured out how to slow down and get decent journalism for most people. Newspapers, trying to survive, are fighting for survival and clicks, and that eventually we'll figure this all out. More pessimistically, that hacking and trolling is taking us down the path to a version of Orwell's 1984. Just a few decades later than Orwell predicted.
You want more? An obvious part of the problem of getting the big picture is follow up of stories. So here's a video that was posted two days ago - a talk by Robert Tibbo, Edward Snowden's attorney in Hong Kong who is also the attorney for the refugees in Hong Kong who hid Snowden while he was there. It seems the Hong Kong bar association has created trumped up charges against Tibbo and are trying to disbar him. He tells us that they demand information from him, but the complaint against him is from an anonymous source and they refuse to give him any details.
I'd note that I lived in Hong Kong for a year when the British were still in charge. While it was nominally a democracy, people didn't have a whole lot of power compared to many democracies. Today it is part of China and the special protections Hong Kong people thought they'd gotten before they were handed back by the British, have little meaning. The fact that the bar association is doing what the government wants it to do is hardly surprising. China doesn't treat lawyers or anyone opposing them with much respect. Tibbo's arguments here are based on bar association standards in Western countries. I didn't hear him citing any Hong Kong rules or laws (though I may have missed it.) That's not to belittle his situation or his valiant efforts on behalf of his clients. But it suggests this video is aimed at the West, particularly Canada (his home) whose government is also dragging its feet in accepting this refugees.
Here's a Montreal article about Tibbo. It gives more background on Tibbo's life and legal career in Hong Kong. I can't figure out the date, but it seems to be much closer to when Snowden was in Hong Kong.
We get so much news, so fast, and so superficially covered, that it's hard to separate the trivial from the truly significant. We knew, back in 1969, that landing on the moon was a major change for human beings in their relationship with space and with humans' self image. But today such earth-shattering (certainly in a figurative sense the moon landing was) events whiz by our consciousness.*
So I'm offering you some predictable science events coming up this next year as outlined by Deborah Netburn, Melissa Healy, Julia Rosen in the LATimes today under the title,"Nine stories to watch in the new year."Of course, the article itself has a lot more details on each project/event. And it has cool pictures too.
I'm going to put this list on the refrigerator, so when these become news stories, I will remember they were coming and have a more holistic sense of them all together. And I can add other key stories that aren't on this list.
1. New Horizons pays historic visit to Ultima Thule: While you’re sipping champagne this New Year’s Eve, a spacecraft 4 billion miles from Earth will be making history.
2. "Redefining the metric system: On May 20, the international metrology community will change the definitions of four basic units of measurement: the kilogram (mass), the Kelvin (temperature), the mole (amount) and the ampere (electrical current)."
3. "Antarctica gets ready for its close-up: It’s summer in Antarctica, which means it’s the season for science. In January, two big expeditions will begin to explore pressing questions about how the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is changing — and what that means for the rest of the planet."
Sorry, can't skip this comment from the Antarcica story without my own comment:
"In addition, scientists will “collaborate” with seals by outfitting them with monitoring equipment that gathers data as they forage."
Even with the quotes around collaborate, this is still misleading. They are using seals to further their research. Whether the actual experiment is ethical or not, using 'collaborate' makes it sound much more like the seals are eagerly in on this and getting something out of it too. (And the research may well be intended to help the seals long term, but the seals surely are not willing collaborators.)
4. "New ways to prevent opioid abuse: The statistics of opioid dependency and death remain grim. And let’s not sugarcoat this: The data suggest things will probably get worse before they get better. In 2019, government agencies, health policy experts and medical researchers will be looking for ways to change the trajectory of this American crisis."
5. "The periodic table turns 150: It’s time to step back and appreciate one of the great marvels of science. That’s why the United Nations has designated 2019 the International Year of the Periodic Table. The choice wasn’t arbitrary: 2019 marks the 150th anniversary of the theory around which the table is organized. Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev discovered the cyclical pattern — or periodicity — in how the elements behave as they increase in atomic weight."
If subtracting 150 from 2019 is a challenge, that gets us back to 1869. So, no, Abraham Lincoln never heard of the Periodic Table because he was assassinated in 1865.
6. "Youth climate lawsuit may finally go to trial: A landmark climate lawsuit has been inching closer to trial for four years. And in 2019, it may get its day in federal court at last — unless judges toss the case once and for all. The suit was brought by 21 young people who say the U.S. government is violating their constitutional rights by promoting the use of fossil fuels in spite of the dangers posed by climate change."
7. "A traffic jam on the moon: If you thought going to the moon was passe, think again. In 2019, China, India and Israel are all expected to land unmanned spacecraft on the lunar surface, while NASA steps up its efforts to return a human crew to the moon by 2028."
8. "How to move forward with gene editing: Few were expecting that 2018 would see the birth of twin girls whose DNA had been edited in the lab when they were just days-old embryos. But it did, and now the scientific and bioethical questions raised by gene editing promise to be front and center in 2019."
9. "Will money start pouring in for gun research? If the trend continues, the coming year will bring more school shootings and more mass shootings. And those will keep the complex of related issues — gun access and storage, mental health and violence prevention — front and center. Philanthropies have responded to nearly 20 years of federal funding limits on firearms research with new private investments , and that money has begun to nurture a generation of public health researchers with expertise in these subjects."
*As a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand in the late sixties, I watched the moon-landing in a Thonburi classroom. That was one event that garnered plenty of attention in - then - far away Thailand. But I learned during those years that not hearing the US daily news wasn't that big a deal. Things that were truly important, I would learn about. The rest - like car crashes and routine murders - were just variations of the same story with different details that I really didn't need to know. Exceptions like the Sharon Tate murder, I did find out about eventually.
