Thursday: Hili dialogue

March 30, 2023 • 6:45 am

Good morning on Thursday, March 30, 2023, which also happens to be National Turkey Neck Soup Day.  (I suppose it would be okay with matzo balls),

It’s also National Doctors’ Day (United States), National Doctors’ Day, World Bipolar Day, Spiritual Baptist/Shouter Liberation Day in Trinidad and Tobago, and Pencil Day.

Here’s a Faber video about how the humble pencil is made.  It’s complicated but a fun video—except they didn’t show how they put the erasers on!

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the March 30 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Don’t look for an indictment of Trump any time in the next several weeks, as the grand jury is taking a long break.

The Manhattan grand jury investigating hush money paid on Donald Trump’s behalf is scheduled to consider other matters next week before taking a previously scheduled two-week hiatus, a person familiar with the matter said Wednesday. That means a vote on whether or not to indict the former president likely wouldn’t come until late April at the earliest.

The break, which was scheduled in advance when the panel was convened in January, coincides with Passover, Easter and spring break for the New York City public school system.

The person who confirmed the grand jury’s schedule was not authorized to speak publicly about secretive grand jury proceedings and did so on condition of anonymity. A message left with the district attorney’s office was not immediately returned.

In a statement released through a lawyer, Trump said: “I HAVE GAINED SO MUCH RESPECT FOR THIS GRAND JURY.”

Now what the deuce is that about? All odds are that they’ll vote to indict him, so he’s applauding them for taking a break?

. . .the district attorney’s office has made no public statements on the timing of any possible indictments, continuing its work in secret over the last two weeks. On March 20, the grand jury heard from a witness favorable to Trump.

People familiar with how grand jury processes typically unfold cautioned that the schedule could change and that prosecutors could still ask jurors to consider charges or vote on an indictment on one of the days they’re expected to meet on other matters.

Few people — Manhattan District Alvin Bragg and the prosecutors in charge of the grand jury investigation — know precisely how the grand jury investigation is proceeding and at what pace. They control when witnesses are called to testify and will be the ones deciding whether, and when, to seek an indictment.

And of course there’s a possibility of no indictment, though based on the prosecution’s expections, an indictment seems likely. We’ll just have to wait this one out.

*Esau MacCaulley in the NYT on the latest shooting in Nashville (that’s true in both senses of the sentence):

There are many ways to judge the success or failure of a country. We can look at its economy, the strength of its military or the quality of its education. We can examine the soundness of our bridges or the smoothness of our highways. But what if we used a different standard? We should judge a nation by a simple metric: the number of weeping parents it allows, the small coffins it tolerates.

The debate around gun control is not new, of course, and each tragedy brings a fresh wave of calls for common-sense gun regulation. The adversaries of reform will rebuke us for turning a tragedy, the deaths of six innocent people, into an occasion to debate politics. We will be urged to offer prayers for the victims and their families while we await the appropriate time to discuss the more difficult issues. But too often it seems that rather than waiting for the right time, politicians are simply trying to wait out the news cycle.

Frankly, I’m sick of those people who say that we don’t have a gun problem; we have a people problem. Do you think that if we took the British or Scottish approach to gun control, MORE people would die in America? Or that everyone who wanted mental health care got it, there would be no more mass shootings? How would a gun dealer identify someone with mental health issues?

*Apropos, a dispiriting piece in the Washington Post, “In Congress, little urgency to address gun violence with legislation.”

After a shooter killed three children and three adults at a private Christian school in Nashville, on Monday, lawmakers on Capitol Hill indicated there was little support for addressing gun violence through legislation.

While President Biden on Tuesday called upon Congress to pass an assault weapons ban, Republicans in the GOP-controlled House reiterated their objection to any actions that would restrict access to guns, instead stressing that mental health issues remain the root cause of the country’s gun violence problem. And Democrats, who narrowly control the Senate, said they were reluctant to push gun-related legislation unless they have significant support from the chamber’s Republicans.

“I’m a realist,” said Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), the chair of the Judiciary Committee, about the possibility of moving gun legislation through his committee without enough Republican support to overcome the 60-vote filibuster. “I know what’s going to happen on the floor.”

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), a key negotiator of a bipartisan gun-control package that passed last year following the school shooting in Uvalde, Tex., said he didn’t see anything else that Congress could do on the issue, dismissing calls to expand background checks and Biden’s plea to ban assault weapons.

“I would say we’ve gone about as far as we can go” on guns, Cornyn said.

That he can say this, and be correct, is a sad fact about America. Arguing about mental-health issues while leaving guns alone resigns us to one fate: every couple weeks some kids will die in a school shooting, parents and loved ones will weep copiously, and it will keep on forever. I refuse to accept that gun control will never be fixed, just as there was a time when people couldn’t imagine that black people could have equal rights under the law

*The former Supreme Court reporter for the NYT, Linda Greenhouse, discusses a case of gun control where the Supremes may soon make a very bad ruling: “Where will the Supreme Court Draw the Line on Guns?”  It’s about recent court rulings about whether those under restraining orders for committing domestic violence should be allowed to own guns. Only a gun lunatic would say that the Second Amendment, which allows gun ownership for having a “well regulated Militia”, could imagine that the Founders would want domestic abusers to have guns. But read:

On March 17, the Biden administration asked the justices to overturn an appeals court decision that can charitably be described as nuts, and accurately as pernicious. The decision by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit invalidated a federal law that for almost 30 years has prohibited gun ownership by people who are subject to restraining orders for domestic violence.

The Fifth Circuit upheld the identical law less than three years ago. But that was before President Donald Trump put a Mississippi state court judge named Cory Wilson on the appeals court. (As a candidate for political office in 2015, Wilson said in a National Rifle Association questionnaire that he opposed both background checks on private gun sales and state licensing requirements for potential gun owners.)

Judge Wilson wrote in a decision handed down in March that the appeals court was forced to repudiate its own precedent by the logic of the Supreme Court’s decision in the New York licensing case. He was joined by another Trump judge, James Ho, and by Edith Jones, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan; Judge Jones has long been one of the most aggressive conservatives on the country’s most conservative appeals court.

Now it is up to the justices to say whether that analysis is correct.

It’s NUTS! Now the government must prove that any regulation of firearms is in line with America’s “historical tradition” based on the Court’s dubious interpretation of the Second Amendment. And why you can’t use history as a guide;

In a forthcoming article, Professors Joseph Blocher of Duke Law School and Reva B. Siegel of Yale point out that there is a reason for the failure of early American lawmakers to consider domestic violence a reason to take away an abuser’s gun: The very concept of domestic violence was alien to the Constitution’s framers because wives were completely subordinate to their husbands and wife beating was widely tolerated.

Ergo, forget history and make a reasonable assessment based on balancing conflicting interests for the good of society. There is no reasonable construal of that question that would allow domestic abusers to own guns.

. . .There is no doubt that under the old interest-balancing test, the government would prevail. The interest in keeping guns out of the hands of domestic abusers is that obvious, as even the Fifth Circuit found in 2020. “The parties agree,” the court noted then, “that reducing domestic gun abuse is not just an important government interest, but a compelling one. They only dispute whether §922(g)(8) is reasonably adapted to that interest. We hold that it is.”

*This story from CNN not only shows how serious Americans are about their fishing contests, but the depravity that can be involved in such a trivial matter as the weight of a fish.

Two men who allegedly cheated to win a competitive fishing competition have pleaded guilty to charges, including cheating, according to the Cuyahoga County Office of the Prosecutor.

Jacob Runyan and teammate Chase Cominsky rocked the competitive fishing world after it was discovered their fish were stuffed with lead weights and fish fillets at an Ohio fishing tournament in September 2022.

Both have now pleaded guilty for cheating and the unlawful ownership of wild animals during the Lake Erie Walleye Trail tournament.

“This plea is the first step in teaching these crooks two basic life lessons,” said Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael C. O’Malley in a statement Monday.

“Thou shall not steal, and crime does not pay.”

In open court on Monday, both men admitted their guilt, as part of their plea agreement, and also agreed to forfeit ownership of the boat and trailer used in the tournament.

They face six months to a year in prison and could have their fishing licenses suspended for up to three years, when they are sentenced.

The state is recommending a sentence of six-months-probation to the court. They will be sentenced on May 11.

Here’s a video of the cheating scandal. The fish were walleyes, and there was, in fact $30,000 at stake. This shows the moment the fishermen were caught cheating:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s having Deep Thoughts:

Hili: I’m thinking about the nature of consciousness.
A: And?
Hili: It’s somehow strange.

In Polish:

Hili: Zastanawiam się nad naturą świadomości.
Ja: I co?
Hili: Dziwna jakaś.

And a picture of Baby Kulka:

********************

From Beth, a cartoon by Sam Gross:

From Now That’s Wild:

From Thomas (I may have posted this before):

From Masih, with the Google translation:

By sending this video today, the 8th of Farvardin, a citizen wrote to us from Mashhad that today near Reza Bazaar, some Basiji groups with placards promoting mandatory hijab were placed on the side of the square. While filming these people, this citizen addresses them with sarcastic questions. The Islamic Republic of Iran thinks that with these works it is creating a culture for forced hijab, which is only imposed on citizens by the Taliban and the Islamic Republic. These people hate you and your compound ignorance and your oppression and way of thinking. You are also well aware that you hide your faces from the people of the city. Turn around to spin. #OurCameraIsOur Weapon #Mehsa Amini

https://twitter.com/AlinejadMasih/status/1641010714096615425

Titania tweeted!

From Malcolm, a cat treadmill:

From Michael: a grant proposal rejected because the applicant misgendered a transgender woman:

From Barry. I sure hope the lion got away! As one commenter said of the King of the Beasts, “He knew when to abdicate.”

From the Auschwitz Memorial, and eight-year-old gassed upon arrival:

Tweets from Professor Cobb. First, a leucistic penguin, quite rare. I hope it does okay.

From Romania:

An article about the ill-advised endorsement of a political candidate by the journal Nature:

27 thoughts on “Thursday: Hili dialogue”

  1. On this day:
    1842 – Ether anesthesia is used for the first time, in an operation by the American surgeon Dr. Crawford Long.

    1856 – The Treaty of Paris is signed, ending the Crimean War.

    1861 – Discovery of the chemical elements: Sir William Crookes announces his discovery of thallium.

    1867 – Alaska is purchased from Russia for $7.2 million, about two cents/acre ($4.19/km2), by United States Secretary of State William H. Seward.

    1870 – Texas is readmitted to the United States Congress following Reconstruction.

    1900 – Archaeologists in Knossos, Crete, discover the first clay tablet with hieroglyphic writing in a script later called Linear B.

    1939 – The Heinkel He 100 fighter sets a world airspeed record of 463 mph (745 km/h).

    1944 – Out of 795 Lancasters, Halifaxes and Mosquitos sent to attack Nuremberg, 95 bombers do not return, making it the largest RAF Bomber Command loss of the war.

    1981 – U.S. President Ronald Reagan is shot in the chest outside a Washington, D.C., hotel by John Hinckley, Jr.; three others are wounded in the same incident.

    Births:
    1746 – Francisco Goya, Spanish-French painter and sculptor (d. 1828).

    1811 – Robert Bunsen, German chemist and academic (d. 1899).

    1820 – Anna Sewell, English author (d. 1878).

    1844 – Paul Verlaine, French poet (d. 1896).

    1853 – Vincent van Gogh, Dutch-French painter and illustrator (d. 1890).

    1882 – Melanie Klein, Austrian-English psychologist and author (d. 1960).

    1928 – Tom Sharpe, English-Spanish author and educator (d. 2013).

    1937 – Warren Beatty, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter.

    1945 – Eric Clapton, English guitarist and singer-songwriter.

    1950 – Robbie Coltrane, Scottish actor (d. 2022).

    1964 – Tracy Chapman, American singer-songwriter and guitarist.

    1968 – Celine Dion, Canadian singer-songwriter.

    I drive a motorbike, so there is the whiff of the Duck of Death round every corner, especially in London: [With apologies to Benedict Cumberbatch.]

    1783 – William Hunter, Scottish anatomist and physician (b. 1718).

    1986 – James Cagney, American actor and dancer (b. 1899).

    2004 – Alistair Cooke, English-American journalist and author (b. 1908).

    2013 – Phil Ramone, South African-American songwriter and producer, co-founded A & R Recording (b. 1934).

    2018 – Bill Maynard, English actor (b. 1928).

    2020 – Bill Withers, American singer-songwriter (b. 1938).

    2021 – G. Gordon Liddy, chief operative in the Watergate scandal (b. 1930).

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  2. There is virtually no prospect of any meaningful gun control in the foreseeable future. The gun issue is now a major component of the culture wars because for the right wing, gun ownership is both a symbol and a tangible way to assure the owners that they have a way to resist governmental tyranny. Living in fear that “they,” whoever “they” may be, are plotting to take away their freedom, they have fantasies of going down in a blaze of glory, firing against the minions of the tyrants attempting to suppress them. For folks such as these, owning AR-15 type weapons provides them with a false sense of security in a world they perceive spinning out of control. People killed in mass shootings are an unfortunate collateral damage, martyrs in the never ending battle against tyranny. For patriots, such incidents cannot be allowed to divert attention from the overriding cause of preserving freedom against “them.” Politicians that say that weapons such as AR-15s should not be regulated because people use them for hunting or getting rid of varmints believe that there are people stupid enough to believe this. They may be right.

    The gun issue as part of the culture wars has only gotten worse in the past few months. Although it staggers the mind to learn, there are actually members of Congress that are wearing AR-15 pins on their lapels. Such insanity is the culmination of forty or more years of far-right agitation. There is no light at the end of the tunnel. The tunnel is blocked by a cave-in. There is no immediate prospect of the blockage being cleared out. After all, we must be continually vigilant against a tyrannical government and only an armed citizenry can prevent it from taking away freedom.

    https://time.com/6253690/ar-15-pins-congress/

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    1. Yes, although a clear majority of US Americans (including many gun owners) favor common-sense gun legislation — such as prohibiting the mentally ill from buying firearms, creating a national gun-sales database, and prohibiting high-capacity magazines and assault-style weapons — there is a segment of American society for whom gun ownership and possession has become a religio-fetishistic talisman. (This segment was greatly emboldened when, some 217 years after the Bill of Rights was ratified, SCOTUS — relying on some dubious historical analysis — first discovered, and chiseled into the nation’s stone tablets, that it was the original intent of the Second Amendment’s framers to create a near-unlimited right to private firearm ownership and possession.)

      Unfortunately, the segment of the US population that considers gun-ownership talismanic includes nearly the entire Republican congressional delegation, which has been sucking on the National Rifle Association campaign-contribution teat ever since they first ran for public office. They understand that the segment of Republicans who will punish them in GOP primaries for enacting gun legislations presents a much graver threat to their continued tenure in office than does the the majority of Americans favoring common-sense gun legislation in a general election. Accordingly, like God and anti-abortionism, guns have become one of the third rails of Republican politics — you touch them, you die.

      Personally, after the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre (in which 26 people, including 20 six- and seven-year olds were murdered by gunfire) produced not scintilla of movement on gun legislation, I’ve felt like the reader accompanying Virgil to the gates of hell and reading the sign mounted there in Dante’s Divine Comedy — “All hope abandon ye who enter here.”

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      1. That’s a bleak assessment and I have to agree. Major societal action to fix a problem comes every once in a while, but not soon. Mining accidents were reduced after accidents with very large losses of life made people aware of the need for reform. If that were the paradigm on guns, you might need the murder of 1,000 people in one go to bring about change. Or, just a very long wait until the religio-fetishists run out of gas on their own accord. Not holding my breath.

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      3. I like the term “common-sense restrictions on …..” Guns, abortion, speech, pretty much anything. I generally do not agree with the sentiment behind the use of the term, but the focus group that came up with it deserves a lot of credit anyway. The implication is, of course, that anyone disagreeing with the plan to ban whatever lacks common sense. Plus, for people who do not have much knowledge of the issue, it put the proposed bans in the category of common sense by default.

        Of course, most Americans agree that the mentally ill should not have access to guns. That is probably why the federal law prohibiting them from having guns has faced no particular opposition in the years since it was made law.
        https://www.atf.gov/file/58791/download

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        1. If the US Supreme Court upholds the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decision striking down the federal law prohibiting persons subject to a domestic-violence injunction from possessing firearms, I’m pretty sure so-called “red-flag” laws (as discussed in my comment #5 below) will be next to fall on Second Amendment grounds. There is also a case currently pending en banc review in the Third Circuit that would strike down the federal statute prohibiting convicted felons from owning or possessing firearms, so long as the conviction at issue was for a nonviolent felony (see ibid.).

          Is there no there federal restriction on firearms that you would consider “common sense,” Max? Are we as a nation doomed to endless mass shootings, including at elementary schools, as the cost of the broad interpretation a majority of the US Supreme Court has given the Second Amendment?

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    2. Your first paragraph, Historian, if expressed in less hysterically florid language and eliminating the word “false”, since no one believes in things he knows to be false, might be endorsed by most gun owners at least in the backs of their minds. So you have common ground, at least. (Actually yes, you are being invaded by feral pigs from Canada, of the four-legged variety. You will have to shoot them, every last one of them. With guns.)

      But knock yourself out if you think you can get a nation-wide ban and confiscation law passed, and enforced, to disarm people who subscribe to that view. They know you can’t, so they don’t even have to argue with you or even complain that you are making fun of them. Even Canada, where our confiscation law passed, can’t seem to bring itself to enforce it, an infinitely easier proposition here that should have been done and dusted in a couple of months. So these now prohibited semi-automatic rifles sit hidden away in gun safes scattered across remote rural Canada waiting for the knock at the door that never comes. Every 15 years or so, one will get used in a crime. Probably the best even a “peace, order, and good government” country can do.

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  3. Do you think that if we took the British or Scottish approach to gun control, MORE people would die in America?

    Well, first you have to assume that we could take that approach. Britain has an omnipotent Parliament, and we have a constitutionally limited government. Based on the prevailing interpretation of the Second Amendment, we would need an amendment to the Federal Constitution to repeal the 2A. Assume for the moment that that passes, yes, I think more people would die, because a lot gun owners wouldn’t willingly give up there guns, and recent history suggests a lot of local law enforcement wouldn’t support gun confiscation. Entire States might resist. It could, in fact, be the cause of an actual civil war. (Saw a meme yesterday to the effect that the AR-15 was too dangerous for civilians to own, but also somehow useless against the military.) Maybe if the President used the bully pulpit to send the message that violence is Wrong, that using guns is not the only way to be seen, regardless of who you are, maybe if he got out in front of the “Trans Day of Vengeance” with its gun-rich advertising, maybe if we stopped trying to understand people’s rage and condemned it, maybe if the President did these things instead of talking about ice cream, the culture in this country would shift. The violence does come from people, and people can be influenced. Amid all the climate crap, where is the push against violence?

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    1. Yes you absolutely could take the same approach as Britain. We didn’t take the nuclear option, it took decades to get to the current state of affairs.

      The problem is that too many Americans are using the excuse “it would be really difficult to do” to avoid doing anything.

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      1. The current distribution of gun deaths in America is Pareto-optimal, Jeremy. Changing it is not “too difficult.” Rather, by definition, perturbing a Pareto optimum makes people on average worse off and so it is rational to resist efforts by activists to make agenda-driven changes.

        America accepts, with less concern than even a shrug, high rates of black-on-black murder with handguns. The criminal justice system doesn’t care, either, even when innocent non-black children are killed in crossfire on a highway. (See Nellie Bowles’s TGIF in The Free Press today.). What white people demand in return for not calling for the racist “over-incarceration” of black people whose victims they don’t care about anyway is the right to arm themselves any way they like, to prevent the murder problem from getting “out of control”, i.e., leaking into white neighbourhoods as they become more “diverse”, i.e., black. White people do care about the occasional tragic deaths when one of the 20 million semi-auto .223 rifles is used in a mass shooting but they are rare in a country of 330 million people and are thus part of the Pareto optimum.

        You can’t change a Pareo optimum without changing the underlying conditions. Disarm, pacify, and corral the violent black underclass, say white gun owners, and then we’ll talk about what guns we “need” to have.

        Gun control is a race problem in America and to a lesser extent Canada but only because we don’t make guns here and the bad guys have to smuggle them in, easily enough done but expensive. If you leave race out of the discussion, you’ll never get it.

        “ of black people is that they be allowed

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  4. Titania tweeted!

    I find it odd that the media seemed to have no problem using female pronouns for the latest school shooter, who identified as male, but invariably don’t commit the sin of “misgendering” men who identify as female. Misogyny both ways round: women’s transgender identities are disregarded, whilst crimes carried out by men are attributed to women. What times we live in.

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  5. The former Supreme Court reporter for the NYT, Linda Greenhouse, discusses a case of gun control where the Supremes may soon make a very bad ruling: “Where will the Supreme Court Draw the Line on Guns?” It’s about recent court rulings about whether those under restraining orders for committing domestic violence should be allowed to own guns.

    Jerry mentioned the decision at issue in that federal Fifth Circuit case, United States v. Rahimi, in a Hili dialogue a few weeks ago here. If SCOTUS holds that persons under domestic violence injunctions cannot be denied access to firearms, it is difficult to see how any state’s so-called “red-flag laws,” which allow law enforcement authorities, after notice and a judicial hearing, to require people who have been shown to represent a danger to others or themselves temporarily to relinquish their possession of firearms, could possibly pass constitutional muster under the Second Amendment.

    The other firearm issue currently percolating through the lower federal courts since the broad opinion written last term by Justice Clarence Thomas for SCOTUS striking down New York State’s concealed-carry licensing law, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022), is whether the federal statute prohibiting convicted felons from owning or possessing firearms, 18 USC section 922(g), passes Second Amendment muster where the offender’s prior felony conviction was for a nonviolent offense. Jerry mentioned this issue in a Hili dialogue last month here.

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  6. “Where will the Supreme Court Draw the Line on Guns?”

    They’ll draw two lines.
    In blood.
    Crossed.
    On the torso of any convenient target.

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    1. After years of being in favor of commonsense gun regulations, why not allow more of them, starting in the halls of Congress. Why should they have special protections that we can’t have⸮

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  7. After Antonin Scalia and his cohort effectively red-lined the Militia Clause out of the Second Amendment, Justice John Paul Stevens proposed this amendment to the Amendment to restore and clarify the role of the Militia Clause. Of course, to echo what has been written in previous comments, Stevens’ proposal has no chance of being adopted. (I wish he would have corrected the bad grammar of the original, but perhaps the Militia Clause is like an ablative absolute in Latin.🤔)
    “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms when serving in the Militia shall not be infringed.”
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-five-extra-words-that-can-fix-the-second-amendment/2014/04/11/f8a19578-b8fa-11e3-96ae-f2c36d2b1245_story.html?tid=usw_passupdatepg

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  8. The problem is not only with assault rifles. The country is now awash in hand guns
    (legal and illegal including “ghost” guns). It is now common for teenagers to carry
    firearms and even school children are bringing hand guns to class. Store robberies
    with kids using guns are now quite common (at least here in Houston).

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    1. Well good, re. the kids – maybe the small business owners who were some of Boss Tweet’s biggest supporters will begin to complain.

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      1. The white and non-black petit-bourgeoisie does complain about handguns because they are far more likely to be used in crimes against them in robberies than are semi-automatic rifles. But nothing can be done. Why? Because arresting illegal handgun owners even under current handgun laws requires the political will to randomly search, arrest, and incarcerate large numbers of young black men, many of whom, in Chicago at least, are concealed carrying out of legitimate concern for self-defence in the lawless neighbourhoods in which they live their short violent lives. They just can’t be bothered to register them or get carriage licences under Chicago’s strict handgun law. Chicago police statistics reported in Reason.com show that very few of the people found with guns during the current crackdown had criminal records, prohibition orders, arrest records, or release conditions that indicated definite criminal activity. (They might have been juveniles carrying for criminal friends and older brothers, Edit: or they might just not have been caught for anything yet.)

        Sure, if everyone is carrying illegally, then everyone is a criminal and lock ‘em all up, after confiscating their guns, just as you would do in an assault-rifle ban. But you don’t have the political will to put that many more young black men in jail than already are, and you know it. So please, no more talk of doing something about handguns.

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  9. That guy with the gun trying to get into heaven reminds me of an old Cracker song. Their singer/songwriter David Lowery (also the founder of Camper van Beethoven) has a great sense of humor and irony.

    “Can I take my gun up to heaven”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79u-zSIrwSA

    And that lion looked miniscule compared to the hippo- that was one scary scene.

    My icon has changed as my normal email address sends all my posts into internet oblivion and now I use a “fake” address that for some reason gets through the wordpress event horizon.

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    1. Their [Cracker’s] singer/songwriter David Lowery (also the founder of Camper van Beethoven) has a great sense of humor and irony.

      Never on better display than in Cracker’s tune “Eurotrash Girl”:

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  10. Ananyo is a friend of mine. I used to work in the library with his wife, who teaches US history at Sussex…

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  12. Professors Joseph Blocher of Duke Law School and Reva B. Siegel of Yale make the claim that the concept of domestic violence was alien to the framers of the constitution.
    I don’t think that is true.
    At the very least ‘in 1655 Massachusetts Bay Colony in North America decreed ‘No man shall strike his wife nor any woman her husband’.
    It is as reasonable a statement as that of the rule of thumb being based on the size of the rod allowed to be used to beat wives. That is, total nonsense.

    Reply

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