June rambling: fragments of finality

new Rebecca Jade and the Cold Fact!

Close but no cigarTheir billionaire descendants, who control Krispy Kreme, Stumptown and other brands, are grappling with the exposure of an unspeakable secret.

The Iranian People Are Not Our Enemy.

John Oliver: Mount Everest’s tourist industry.

Nearly 1 in 4 American adults are worse off now than before the Great Recession.

Forgiveness Is a White Privilege.

The “Moral Budget” is a plan for the future, because everybody has the right to live. Rev. William Barber: “Jeremiah 22 tells us that when political leaders abuse their office & hurt the poor, we must show up in person to deliver a prophetic indictment. Now is the time.”

Weekly Sift – Socialism: What’s in a word?

Best game show host. “Who is Alex Trebek?”

Mark Evanier’s Mayberry Monday.

Arthur’s Internet Wading for June 2019.

Now I Know: Why Frogs Ribbit and The Art of No Noises and Rudolph the Red Knows Undersea Warfare, Dear and The Everyday Hockey Superhero For Hire.

Fastest lawnmower.

HELP

Explosion science: an animated guide to building demolition

A Guide to Low Cost or Free Drug Rehab Options.

How to Make Your Bedroom Accessible for Disabilities.

The EARTH

U.S. Air Quality Is Headed the Wrong Way

‘Plasticrust’: A new form of pollution is forming on a Portuguese island.

LGBTQ+

Karen Oliveto — United Methodist Church’s first lesbian bishop. My wife knows Karen; Karen’s sister and my wife were college roommates.

Not everything we “know” about the Stonewall Rebellion is true; heck, just read Arthur’s blog all month.

New GLAAD Study Shows Decline in LGBTQ Acceptance In 18-34-Year-Olds.

Barbara Walters interview with playwright-actor Harvey Fierstein (1983)

djt

The Lawless Administration.

John Oliver: Impeachment.

Sulzberger wanted to reach the business leaders and conservatives who read the Journal.

Twitter Will Put Warning Labels On His Rule-Breaking Tweets

Kimmel Shows How His Campaign ‘Monetizes Stupid’.

The Most Serious Accusation Yet?

FATHER’S DAY

Bobmill: The final story and Fragments of finality.

Could Donor #2065 Be My Father?

Census Bureau Releases First-Ever Report on Men’s Fertility.

MUSIC

I Only Smoke When I Drink – Rebecca Jade and the Cold Fact

Tiny Desk Concert – Sesame Street

Once Upon A Time – MonaLisa Twins, featuring John Sebastian

Coverville – 1266: Cover Stories for Alanis Morissette, and Ian Hunter of Mott the Hoople and 1267: Cover Stories for Stereophonics and The Kinks.

The New Gospel of Rock.

Disney Medley on plastic bottles.

Don’t Send Me Away – Garfield Fleming.

How Beethoven went from Napoleon’s biggest fan to his worst critic.

The Day the Music Burned.

More susceptible to falsehood than to truth

Anything can be corrupted, polluted or discredited

truthI receive Quotable Notes daily. One from March: “Man’s mind is so formed that it is far more susceptible to falsehood than to truth.” –Desiderius Erasmus (1469-1536), a Dutch humanist who was the greatest scholar of the northern Renaissance. I don’t know that “the first editor of the New Testament” is correct. But it WOULD appear so.

For the past couple years, in order not to write about him ALL THE TIME, I’ve posted on this date some links about a person who has described himself, more than once as a “an extremely stable genius”.

This has turned out to be an extremely difficult task. It’s not that there’s a dearth of examples of unsettling behavior but rather a plethora of them.

He feels compelled to comment about his claimed expertise in all subjects in some way, even when it comes to offering advice about something for which he is completely unqualified. He offered unsolicited advice on the best way to fight the Notre Dame Cathedral fire. It was met by derision and laughter because the weight of dropped water on a rooftop fire would have collapsed the structure and made things much worse.

He prevaricates brazenly, having lied or misled the American people more than 10,000 times.

He berates senior officials constantly. It’s remarkable how many times his aides ignored his dodgy or possibly illegal requests. He is tired of hearing “You Can’t Do That.” We should all be afraid.

Back in March, his 32 tweets were noteworthy, from a Saturday Night Live rerun he groused about to several attacks on the late John McCain.

He “railed against Shep Smith and other Fox hosts he doesn’t like; called on the network to defend Tucker Carlson and Jeanine Pirro, two hosts he does like.” He’s since dissed Chris Wallace, and the network in general for allowing Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg on the platform.

Nation of Change noted: “No one has yet assessed the full disaster from stripping the office of dignity and competence, plus shredding prestige overseas. When ‘anything goes,’ even changes weekly, then anything can be corrupted, polluted or discredited.”

Frank S. Robinson says he has plan-free fact-free anal sphincter foreign policy. He CLEARLY has no idea how tariffs work.

Robert Reich wrote that, as a result of the tax cuts, “business is booming for connoisseurs of private planes. That’s because the tax law allows businesses to deduct the full cost of buying a plane in the first year of purchase… Some wealthy individuals have even created shell businesses to utilize the deductions.” His golf habit has cost American taxpayers $100 million.

Most Americans believe he has made race relations worse. He again targets transgender people – this time in new proposal to rescind Obama-era healthcare protections.

I could go on, and on, but it’s exhausting. He says he would listen if foreigners offered dirt on opponents; he feels no responsibility to protect the integrity of our democracy.

Should he be impeached? Probably, and for all these reasons. Even Justin Amash, a Republican, finds his actions “inherently corrupt.”

That said, as awful as I find him, he can win re-election in 2020. And THAT depresses the hell out of me.


A fugue

May #2: Philosophy of the world

Why Is Everyone Running for President?

Waiting for the But
xkcd -licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.
What I Lost (and Can Never Get Back) When My Father Was in Guantanamo North

How Poor Oversight and Fraud in Generic Drug Industry Threatens Patients’ Health

Why Is Everyone Running for President? It’s a Billion-Dollar Industry

‘We’ve created a civilisation hell bent on destroying itself – I’m terrified’, writes Earth scientist

What Changed My Mind About Climate Change? Risk management is not a binary choice

Last Week with John Oliver: Green New Deal and Death Investigations

Last American slave ship discovered in Alabama

What Reparations for Slavery Might Look Like in 2019

Largest ever class of black women graduating from West Point – 32!

Hilde Lysiak of the Orange Street News gives commencement address at Reed School of Media at West Virginia University

‘We must be in this together. Relentlessly.’ Deborah Lipstadt, MA ’72, PhD ’76, delivered the keynote address at Brandeis University’s 68th Commencement

Arthur’s Unexpected reboot

Understanding the divine sense of humor

Why certain words are left out of our English-language Bibles

Kindness Can Be Taught. Here’s How

Casting announced for The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World, Joy Gregory and Gunnar Madsen’s acclaimed Off-Broadway hit, at the Bridge Street Theatre in Catskill, NY July 11-14, 18-21

Portrait of Steve Martin and Martin Short on 60 Minutes Australia

The Bob Emergency: a study of athletes named Bob- Part I and Part 2

The Secret Behind the Success of Avengers Endgame – not that much of a secret

Blogging revelation and reflection

How to Be an Ethical Influencer and I’m A Supposed Influencer and An Open Letter to Professional YouTubers

Now I Know: What do you do when someone you don’t like is wearing your clothes? and The Second Life of Crayons and Pigcasso

Does This Dress Make Me Look Guilty?

Why do people love coffee and beer

Ignaz Trebitsch-Lincoln was one of the most remarkable adventurers, scoundrels and fraudsters of the 20th century

To keep his daughter from getting bored on a family trip a dad had her Irish Step Dance in every location they stopped in at Ireland

8 Things Your Credit Card Can’t Buy

The Worst Product Ever

MUSIC

Rolling Stone – Annie & the Hedonists

Someone You Loved– Lewis Capaldi.

And The Waltz Goes On – André Rieu, composed by Anthony Hopkins

Symphonic suite for the Hayao Miyazaki film Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind by Joe Hisaishi

Coverville: 1262: This Day in Covers – 1989 and 1263: The Smiths Cover Story

May rambling: lost in the crowd

Hating what you don’t understand

sharing_options
Sharing Options From xkcd -This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.

UN report details humans have pushed one million species to the brink of extinction

China takes the lead on global climate policy and the U.S. steps back

Why You Can No Longer Get Lost in the Crowd

Physicians Get Addicted Too

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Lethal Injections

Southern newspapers played a major role in racial violence. Do they owe their communities an apology?”

Hating what you don’t understand

Riley Howell’s Parents Say He Was Shot 3 Times While Tackling the UNC Charlotte Gunman – eight minutes from my sister’s house

A California teacher on medical leave for breast cancer has to pay for her substitute

What should “electable” mean?

10 U.S. Towns Stuck in Time – I’ve been to 4 of them

The fact that I’m in front of you means that I was here first

Where the US’s Foreign-Born Live Has Changed Over Time

Kid’s ‘Wow’ reaction to hearing Mozart

How I Read and Why

Doris Day dead at age 97

Tim Conway, RIP

May Chris Farley’s memory be a blessing

“Behind the scenes” visit to Sesame Street done by 60 Minutes Australia

Roosevelt Franklin – Muppet of Sesame Street

The Tony awards are June 9 on CBS

Inside the World’s Only Museum Dedicated to Ventriloquism

Tennis star Hans Redl

Albany Patroons basketball game day

Binghamton Rumble Ponies get first no-hitter in 13 years

Afterlife in New Zealand

Now I Know: The Dancing Plague and Why You Shouldn’t Take Advice From a Board Game and Why These Windows Don’t Have Windows and When a Truck Driver Had a Very Delicious Meltdown and The Cars that Karaoke and Why Do I Keep Getting Calls from Slovenia?!

Hyper-Casual Games Gone Viral

Australian $50 note typo: spelling mistake printed 46 million times

She was the ‘queen of the mommy bloggers,’ then her life fell apart

Will this WordPress theme allow me to make money?

Funny goats: screaming like humans; an inside joke from staff training in Ithaca

MUSIC

Que Sera Sera – Doris Day

Mama – Clean Bandit

Believer – Bigfoot & Puddles

Everybody Wants To Rule The World – Mackenzie Johnson

Ottorino Resphigi’s The Pines of Rome

Grow – Sabrina Lentini

Danzas de Panama by William Grant Still

StillSane – Carolyne Mas

Alassio (In the South) – Sir Edward Elgar

I Eat Dinner (When the Hunger’s Gone) – Kate and Anna McGarrigle

Coverville 1261: Cover Stories for Billy Joel and Echo and the Bunnymen

The Story Behind The Twilight Zone Theme Song

The Simpsons’ “Upstate New York” song

When TWO bloggers, one who started in 1996 and the other in 2005 post this separately, who am I to argue?

The Beatles off-white album

James Holzhauer on JEOPARDY!

Some people get really upset if you don’t love what they love

James HolzhauerI was at a work conference. A long-time work friend asked me about James Holzhauer, the 22-day JEOPARDY! champion, and counting, who has pretty much destroyed the competition.

Before I could give my opinion, She says, “Boring! Right?” And I agreed.

I was wary about answering because SO many people have expressed a different viewpoint. That is fine by me, but sometimes it’s not fine by them. I say it’s not interesting. They say, “That’s your opinion!” Of course, it’s my opinion.

I say, “It’s like watching a 15-4 baseball game or 62-7 football game.” They say, “I hate football,” which is rather not the point. It is watching contestant after contestant going through a meat grinder.

I’ve freely noted that Holzhauer is doing something that no one else has done. A million dollars in 14 games; it took Ken Jennings twice as long to reach that threshold. He’s rightly made the mainstream news.

He knows a lot, but he also beats people on the buzzer, because his opponents often think they know the answer and can’t get in. And he bets HEAVILY because betting is what he does for a living – professional sports gambler.

Still, it’s like why people HATED the New York Yankees after they won five World Series in a row in 1949-1953. Many of the games are like the Yankees playing a Little League team.

So people are SHOCKED that I don’t particularly enjoy the games. I could just write it off as Arthur’s Law, but I think there’s a more specific thing here.

Mark Evanier has engaged in a series called Cranky, Rambling Rant. Part One was “about how some people get really upset if you don’t love what they love.” Part Two was “about how some people (including probably most of the same ones) get really upset when you do love something they don’t love.”

I’m experiencing Part One a lot. In most cases, they’re asking ME because I was once – OK, twice – on JEOPARDY! But I’ve been watching the show for a long time, back when Art Fleming was hosting back in the 1960s.

There was a long period when no one could appear on the regular show more than five games. For all sorts of geeky reasons, having to do with the quality of Tournament of Champion winners, I thought that was a good rule.

The rule won’t return, I don’t think, because more people are watching when James Holzhauer or Arthur Chu or Austin Rogers is on. Some folks, regular JEOPARDY! watchers, have told me they won’t watch it again until Holzhauer is gone, but I expect they’re in the minority.

I’ll still tune in because that’s what I do. But I’ll enjoy seeing new champions.

Ramblin' with Roger
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