Welcome to a Hump Day ( হাম্প ডে in Assamese) February 7, 2024, and National Fettuccine Alfredo Day, one of my all-time favorite pasta dishes. It goes well with an off-dry white wine, like a Riesling.
It’s also “e Day” (its first two digits are 2 and 7, and today is 2/7), National Girls and Women in Sports Day (you know the rest), Rose Day, Ballet Day, National Periodic Table Day, and National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the February 7 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*The Republicans have killed a bill that would address the border crisis and send aid to Ukraine. They did this so Biden couldn’t claim a victory in November. They are willing to let the country go downhill to gain a temporary partisan advantage. More later. (BTW, Trump is running this show even though he’s not in power.)
*Good news for us Democrats (or anybody who’s rational): A federal appeals court has ruled that the Donald doesn’t have immunity for criminal things he may have done in office:
A federal appeals court on Tuesday rejected former President Donald J. Trump’s claim that he was immune to charges of plotting to subvert the results of the 2020 election, ruling that he must go to trial on a criminal indictment accusing him of seeking to overturn his loss to President Biden.
The unanimous ruling, by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, handed Mr. Trump a significant defeat. But it was unlikely to be the final word on his claims of executive immunity: Mr. Trump, who is on a path to locking up the Republican presidential nomination, is expected to continue his appeal to the Supreme Court.
Still, the panel’s 57-page ruling signaled an important moment in American jurisprudence, answering a question that had never been addressed by an appeals court: Can former presidents escape being held accountable by the criminal justice system for things they did while in office?
The question is novel because no former president until Mr. Trump had been indicted, so there was never an opportunity for a defendant to make — and courts to consider — the sweeping claim of executive immunity that he put forward.
The panel, composed of two judges appointed by Democrats and one Republican appointee, said in its decision that, despite the privileges of the office he once held, Mr. Trump was subject to federal criminal law like any other American.
“For the purpose of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant,” the panel wrote. “But any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as president no longer protects him against this prosecution.”
Now of course this will be appealed to the Supreme Court, but, conservative as it is, I can’t help but believe that the Supremes will affirm the bedrock principle of American jurisprudence: all Americans are equal under the law.
*Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post answers your questions about the appeals-court decision and other issues. Here are what I see as the most important ones.
Q: Hi Eugene, and thanks for being here today. I realize you are not a lawyer (me neither), but how long will it take the full panel of the DC Appeals Court to meet and hear Trump’s appeal? And when the full panel denies Trump’s claim of immunity, will the Supreme Court actually hear the appeal? And why does this take so long? The election clock is ticking.
A: The three-judge Appeals Court panel that issued the ruling today clearly had that ticking clock in mind. The judges did a clever thing: They ruled that if Trump appeals directly to the Supreme Court, the trial remains on hold until the Supremes rule. But if Trump decides to make a time-wasting appeal to the full Appeals Court, which is a possible intermediate step, then Judge Chutkan is permitted to proceed with the trial. So if he wants to stay out of the dock, Trump has to appeal directly to the Supreme Court — which could, and I hope would, expedite its hearing of the case. That’s a long way of saying “I don’t know,” but the Appeals Court judges are trying their best to hurry things along.
*****
Q. . . . will the appeal to the Supreme Court delay the trial until the election in November, do you think?
A: That will be up to the Supreme Court. They can move with lightning speed when they want to, as in Bush v. Gore. Trump’s “absolute immunity” claim is ridiculous on its face, and I can’t image that Chief Justice Roberts wants to leave the impression that his court artificially delayed a slam-dunk ruling until after the election. We’ll see.
*****
Q: Most people are assuming the Court will find some excuse to keep Trump on the ballot in the Colorado case. Despite the self-proclaimed originalists’ insistence that they rule based on the plain-text understanding of the Constitution, people are sure they’ll rule for their preferred outcome. But what if they can get the two to align? The right-wingers, wanting to favor Republicans, could decide (not unreasonably) that Republicans’ electoral chances would be better without Trump on the ballot. And they could bolster their crumbling legitimacy by showing their independence. And with lifetime tenure, they’re unreachable for angry MAGA voters, so they needn’t cave like Congressional Republicans. Do you think there’s any possibility it might go that way?
A: Anything is possible. My guess on this case — the 14th Amendment provision that may or may not make Trump ineligible to run — is that the Supreme Court will find some way to allow him on the ballot. If necessary, I think, they might look for some procedural off-ramp to avoid having to actually rule on what the Amendment says. Again, though, I’m not a lawyer…
I agree with Robinson on the last question unless Trump has been convicted of a criminal offense at the time of the ruling, which is unlikely. He could still be elected President after or during the time he’s convicted, and then the question arises whether he can pardon himself. Remember, though, Presidential pardons are meant for federal crimes, not state crimes. If he tries to pardon himself as President, that will set off another Jan.6-like fracas, but I think the Supreme Court will affirm that he can’t do that.
*According to the NYT, more than a fifth of the hostages still in Hamas’s hands (that would be 136) are no longer alive.
More than a fifth of the remaining hostages being held in Gaza are dead, according to an internal assessment conducted by the Israeli military.
Israeli intelligence officers have concluded that at least 32 of the remaining 136 hostages captured by Hamas and its allies on Oct. 7 have died since the start of the war, according to a confidential assessment that was reviewed by The New York Times. The families of the 32 hostages whose deaths are confirmed have been informed, according to four military officials who spoke anonymously in order to discuss a sensitive matter.
The four officials said that officers were also assessing unconfirmed intelligence that indicated that at least 20 other hostages may have also been killed.
The figure of 32 is higher than any previous number the Israeli authorities have publicly disclosed of hostages who are dead. In an answer to a request for comment, the Israeli military said that most of the dead were killed on Oct. 7.
The news is likely to worsen a furor in Israel, where a debate over the government’s course of action in Gaza regarding the hostages has become divisive.
More than 240 hostages were captured by Hamas and its allies during the Oct. 7 Hamas-led raid on southern Israel, prompting Israel to retaliate with massive airstrikes and then a ground invasion.
Barely anybody remembers the hostages, an egregious war crime by Hamas that’s been forgotten in the deluge of the MSM to valorize Palestine (and, by proxy, Hamas). At least the NYT wrote about it, but for every story about the missteps of Hamas, there are four about the missteps, or supposed missteps, of Israel. Here’s one of the latter, which pales compared to the hostage issue.
*I consider this big news. Jennifer Crumbley, the mother of a teenager who killed four people in a school shooting, has been found guilty of manslaughter for her help in getting the kid the gun and ignoring warning signs that he was unstable.
The mother of a Michigan teen who killed four students at his high school in 2021 was found guilty of four counts of involuntary manslaughter, the first time a parent of a school shooter has been convicted of homicide in connection with the attack.
Jennifer Crumbley, whose son, Ethan, pleaded guilty to four counts of murder in the killings at Oxford High about 40 miles north of Detroit and is serving life in prison, lowered her head slightly but showed little other reaction as the verdict was read in an Oakland County courtroom. The judge set a sentencing date of April 9.
Crumbley’s husband, James Crumbley, will stand trial for the same charges in a separate trial next month.
Prosecutors portrayed Crumbley as an out-of-touch parent, more concerned with her horses and a six-month affair she admitted had played out during the year of the shooting than about her son’s deteriorating mental state.
The case was the first time prosecutors had sought to pin direct responsibility for a school shooting on the parents of the shooter. Some legal experts cautioned that the case could open the door to charges against parents whose children might use other deadly items around the house, like a baseball bat. Gun control groups praised the move as a way to put parents on notice of the dangers of unsecured weapons in the home.
I’m with the gun-control advocates. Baseball bats are not designed to hurt people, while guns, though they can be used to shoot at targets and hunt, are increasingly being used to kill people. How many homicides last year were due to baseball bats? But I’m sure Crumbley can find plenty of free legal help from the gun lobby to appeal.
*Eliott Abrams, identified as “a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the chairman of the Vandenberg Coalition”, writes in Tablet about “The two-state delusion”, subtitled “The Biden administration is leading a push to recognize a Palestinian state that will be a danger to the security of Israel”. (Note that yes, he worked for Republicans and was convicted for withholding information from Congress.) Reader Robert also sent me a link, saying, “This is the most clear-eyed, realistic critique I’ve seen of the sudden global enthusiasm for a two-state solution. The politicians promoting the idea ignore all the gargantuan problems that Elliot Abrams lays bare here.”
In the West, the call for a “two-state solution” is mostly a magical incantation these days. Diplomats and politicians want the Gaza war to stop. They want a way out that seems fair and just to voters and makes for good speeches. But they are not even beginning to grapple with the issues that negotiating a “two-state solution” raises, and they are not seriously asking what kind of state “Palestine” would be. Instead they simply imagine a peaceful, well-ordered place called “Palestine” and assure everyone that it is just around the corner. By doing so they avoid asking the most important question: Would not an autocratic, revanchist Palestinian state be a threat to peace?
The Biden administration, then, joins all enlightened opinion in saying there must be a Palestinian state, but adds that it must not have an army. No other precondition seems to exist for the creation of that state once the Palestinian Authority has been “revamped” or “revitalized” so that it becomes “effective.” And most recently, Blinken has asked his staff for policy options that include formal recognition of a Palestinian state as soon as the war in Gaza ends. This would be a massive change in U.S. policy, which for decades has insisted that a Palestinian state can only emerge from direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. But the pressure is growing, it seems, to skip niceties like negotiations and move quickly to implement the “two-state solution.”
There are three things wrong with this picture. First, none of the current proposals even acknowledges, much less overcomes, the obstacles that have always prevented the “two-state solution.” Second, the “effective governance” reforms fall very far short of creating a decent state in which Palestinians can live freely. And most important, any imaginable Palestinian state will be a dangerous threat to Israel.
But those are the simpler border issues; the tough one is Jerusalem. Will East Jerusalem be the capital of a Palestinian state? If so, what does that mean? The old Arab Quarter only, or the Christian and Armenian quarters too? Do their residents have any say in this? Is it actually being proposed that the Western Wall would be the Israeli border, and if you stand there and look up you are looking at another country? Or that David’s Citadel and the Tower of David would be in Palestine? A look at the map of Jerusalem shows how impractical is the division of Jerusalem again if the city is to thrive, but what about politics? Which Israeli politicians of the left or center are going to be in favor of dividing Jerusalem again, going back to the pre-1967 days—and doing it in the aftermath of the Hamas massacres of Oct. 7?
The whole article could even be longer; there’s nothing, for instance, about the repeated rejections of Israel peace offers by Palestinians, offers that were even more generous than some suggested today. And to me, the issue is terrorism, which is crucial for the viability of any Israeli state:
The Europeans and Americans are not, I imagine, because they do not believe the Palestinians can do it—can create a working democracy. So the U.S. and the EU are willing to create a Palestinian state in the hope that it would be a better autocracy than it is at present—better at policing the terrorist groups, better at fighting corruption, and less repressive.
How likely is that? Fighting corruption, for example, requires a free press to investigate it and independent courts to try cases. But no one (except Sharansky!) is calling for any of that as a precondition for declaring a Palestinian state. So it is highly likely that a new Palestinian Authority will soon be as corrupt as the current one.
There is no potential governing authority of a Palestinian state that is not enthusiastic about getting rid of Israel (the PA pays Palestinians who kill Israelis, for crying out loud!). Unless Israel is guaranteed a peaceful existence without repeated terrorism from a Palestinian state, a two-state solution will never work. You can understand why Israelis are not enthusiastic right now about the two-state solution.
So I wish people would stop saying that this solution (which I once favored, by the way) is a magical way to stop the war and allow peaceful coexistence between Palestine and Israel. It isn’t—not so long as Hamas and the PA and, indeed, most Palestinians, don’t want Israel to exist. Here’s Abrams’ ending:
Creating a Palestinian state will not end the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict” because it will not end the Palestinian and now Iranian dream of eliminating the State of Israel. On the contrary, it can be a launching pad for new attacks on Israel and will certainly be viewed that way by the Jewish state’s most dedicated enemies. A peaceful Palestinian state that represents no threat to Israel is a mirage. It is an illusion indulged by people in the West who want to seem progressive and compassionate, and those in the Arab world who fear resisting the powerful anti-Israel currents that circulate there and are now fortified by Iran. The future security of Israel depends in good part on resisting the two-state formula for endless conflict.
That is true. If you think the two-state solution is going to bring peace between Israel and its neighbors, then yes, I think you’re deluded. Do I have a solution? Not really, unless a third party steps in to govern the second state (that’s not gonna happen). But I think most of us agree that Israel has the right to defend itself against terrorism, which it’s been dealing with for decades.
Remember, the Israeli “blockade” from Gaza of weapons and materials that could be used to make weapons (often mentioned as part of Gaza being an “open-air prison”) was not imposed until Hamas took over Gaza and began perpetrating terrorism. That was 2006, a year after Israel ethnically cleansed its own people over Gaza and turned it over to the Palestinians, together with its infrastructure. The blockade was imposed only to stop ongoing terrorism and wasn’t part of the initial handover of Gaza to Palestinians.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili refuses food (I think this is the first time it’s happened since this website started).
Hili: Night is coming, time to go to bed.A: Do you want supper?Hili: No, thank you, I’ve already eaten.
Hili: Idzie noc, pora iść do łóżka.Ja: Chcesz kolację?Hili, NIe, dziękuję, już zjadłam.
*******************
A real headline from Laurie Ann:
From Mark. If this is true, it’s sheer genius!
Another from Mark:
Masih goes after Rashida Tlaib and Cori Bush. Masih thinks more clearly that most Americans. For some reason I can’t embed the first tweet, so I put up a screenshot (and there’s a correction)
Correction: Rashida Taib voted yes to Mahsa act. The rest of my statement still stands. OK
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) February 1, 2024
From Luana. It’s hilarious that one IDF soldier makes an entire campus “unsafe”. Who can believe that?
NEW: Yale Law's chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, the group that celebrated the murder of 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7, is calling on the school to cancel an event with an IDF soldier, arguing that his presence on campus will make students unsafe.🧵https://t.co/BPC84Sxrmi
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) February 5, 2024
From Malcolm, a fantastic wolf chinwag (sound up!):
Happiness starts with a howl 🐺 pic.twitter.com/LRw21zFdRL
— Wolf Conservation Center 🐺 (@nywolforg) February 1, 2024
From Mark, the IDiots quote Reagan. But where did the cook come from?
Reagan’s riff on the age-old argument for intelligent design, the idea that the order and purposefulness of nature point to a designer.
— Discovery Institute's Center for Science & Culture (@DiscoveryCSC) February 5, 2024
From Simon, who says, “The black sharpie lives again!”. Alina is Trump’s lawyer and senior advisor for MAGA, Inc.
BREAKING: Donald Trump releases evidence that he has never met Alina Habba. pic.twitter.com/hM9J90EcaA
— cαηα∂α нαтεs тя☭мρ (@Trump_Detester) January 31, 2024
From the Auschwitz Memorial. a girl gassed to death upon arrival. She was four years old:
7 February 1939 | A French Jewish girl, Michele Albagli, was born in Paris.
In January 1944 she was deported to #Auschwitz and murdered in the gas chamber. pic.twitter.com/aNtX2wZPbT
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) February 7, 2024
Tweets from Matthew. Anybody who knows their Darwin knows this quote, which Matthew asserts is “true”! I’ll mention “consciousness” here. . .
Charles Darwin began writing his book The Descent of Man #OnThisDay, 1868. “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." pic.twitter.com/7gpAjKjvpy
— Paige Madison (@FossilHistory) February 4, 2024
Subterranean Jews! Do they have space lasers?
Never deleting this app pic.twitter.com/RE3GCs4NZG
— Tim™️ (@VolaTim) January 9, 2024
Yes! Fettuccine Alfredo as a vehicle for a generous helping of Parmesan. Make my accompanying wine a Pouilly-Fuisse or Savignon Blanc please. Always a favorite.
Not Taylor Swift’s jet. I believe that she flies a Dassault Falcon 900 series business jet (looks like a baby version of the old Boeing 727) which this picture certainly ain’t. Sloppy or ignorant, Fox cannot get the simplest things right it seems.
Sloppy, ignorant or malevolent.
I’m going for option #3.
Malevolent indeed for Fox to suppress the fact that the Falcon 900 private jet that Ms. Swift really flies in is negative emitting. Her carbon footprint flying it to the football game was actually less than if she had ridden her bicycle. Or just stayed home like the rest of us are being hectored to do.
How dare they?!
Is there any evidence that Reagan actually supported Intelligent Design, the way that term typically is defined with respect to biology? In that quote from him, it sounds like he might just be saying that the universe appears to have some type of intelligence behind it (e.g. the fine-tuning argument), which is a separate argument from the arguments made by the ID movement (irreducible complexity and so on). Virtually all religious people believe that the universe has an intelligence behind it, but not all of them support the ID movement and its arguments.
When asked about evolution, he replied “Well, it is a theory”, showing that he understood neither evolution nor the word “theory”.
The Gipper was a stone cold (and badly confused) Creationist.
Still, by the standards of today’s Trumpian GOP, he’d be run out of the party as a RINO.
Ken’s back! Where have you been? Hope you’re well.
I’ve just been taking a bit of a break, Stephen, thx.
+1
guns:
I think the angle that will put the problem at the feet of the 2nd amendment apologists (..?..) is the notion of self defense – in this case, the attacker was probably deludedly defending himself (gee, how do I know 99% it was a he, hmm, so mysterious)…
His mind, inundated with all the ideological pollution readers here work hard to parse on a regular basis. I take a wild guess that a powerful psychotropic drug could be at play (I did not look – recall Columbine). Other students criticizing him – even bullying by groups (Again, Columbine). Would it be surprising he rationalized he was defending himself?
Such a sad state. Guns might be for self defense – there is evidence for that, the apologists say – but clearly not everything counts as requiring self defense. To say nothing of the parent’s role.
Darwin quote :
Awesome, going in my file. “Confidence” suggests … I don’t know, maybe a different connotation in the 19th c. / England than now. Now, and in a certain enthusiastic country, “confidence” suggests something closer to hubris or passion..?
The quote is similar to an Asimov quote – undoubtedly Asimov read Darwin (not that he’s plagiarizing, but…).
On this day:
1301 – Edward of Caernarvon (later king Edward II of England) becomes the first English Prince of Wales.
1497 – In Florence, Italy, supporters of Girolamo Savonarola burn cosmetics, art, and books, in a “Bonfire of the vanities”.
1898 – Dreyfus affair: Émile Zola is brought to trial for libel for publishing J’Accuse…!
1900 – A Chinese immigrant in San Francisco falls ill to bubonic plague in the first plague epidemic in the continental United States.
1940 – The second full-length animated Walt Disney film, Pinocchio, premieres.
1951 – Korean War: More than 700 suspected communist sympathizers are massacred by South Korean forces.
1962 – The United States bans all Cuban imports and exports.
1979 – Pluto moves inside Neptune’s orbit for the first time since either was discovered.
1984 – Space Shuttle program: STS-41-B Mission: Astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert L. Stewart make the first untethered space walk using the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU).
1986 – Twenty-eight years of one-family rule end in Haiti, when President Jean-Claude Duvalier flees the Caribbean nation. [Haiti’s first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was sworn in for n this day in 1991.]
1990 – Dissolution of the Soviet Union: The Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party agrees to give up its monopoly on power.
1991 – The Troubles: The Provisional IRA launches a mortar attack on 10 Downing Street in London, the headquarters of the British government.
1992 – The Maastricht Treaty is signed, leading to the creation of the European Union.
1995 – Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, is arrested in Islamabad, Pakistan.
2001 – Space Shuttle program: Space Shuttle Atlantis is launched on mission STS-98, carrying the Destiny laboratory module to the International Space Station.
2009 – Bushfires in Victoria leave 173 dead in the worst natural disaster in Australia’s history.
2013 – The U.S. state of Mississippi officially certifies the Thirteenth Amendment, becoming the last state to approve the abolition of slavery. The Thirteenth Amendment was formally ratified by Mississippi in 1995.
2014 – Scientists announce that the Happisburgh footprints in Norfolk, England, date back to more than 800,000 years ago, making them the oldest known hominid footprints outside Africa.
2016 – North Korea launches Kwangmyŏngsŏng-4 into outer space violating multiple UN treaties and prompting condemnation from around the world.
Births:
1478 – Thomas More, English lawyer and politician, Lord Chancellor of England (d. 1535). [The author of Utopia (1516), he was executed for treason after refusing to recognise Henry VIII’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon and the king’s establishment of the Church of England.]
1726 – Margaret Fownes-Luttrell, English painter (d. 1766).
1802 – Louisa Jane Hall, American poet, essayist, and literary critic (d. 1892).
1804 – John Deere, American blacksmith and businessman, founded Deere & Company (d. 1886).
1812 – Charles Dickens, English novelist and critic (d. 1870).
1825 – Karl Möbius, German zoologist and ecologist (d. 1908).
1867 – Laura Ingalls Wilder, American author (d. 1957).
1873 – Thomas Andrews, Irish shipbuilder and businessman, designed the RMS Titanic (d. 1912). [He drowned along with more than 1,500 others when the ship sank during her maiden voyage.]
1877 – G. H. Hardy, English mathematician and geneticist (d. 1947).
1885 – Sinclair Lewis, American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1951).
1905 – Ulf von Euler, Swedish physiologist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1983).
1908 – Buster Crabbe, American swimmer and actor (d. 1983).
1922 – Hattie Jacques, English actress (d. 1980).
1932 – Alfred Worden, American colonel, pilot, and astronaut (d. 2020).
1934 – Earl King, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (d. 2003).
1946 – Pete Postlethwaite, English actor (d. 2011).
1962 – Garth Brooks, American singer-songwriter and guitarist.
1962 – Eddie Izzard, English comedian, actor, and producer. [Now supposedly in self-described “girl mode” as Suzy, Izzard has twice failed to be selected as a Labour Party candidate for the forthcoming general election.]
1965 – Chris Rock, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter.
1978 – Ashton Kutcher, American model, actor, producer, and entrepreneur.
The death clock is ticking slowly in our breast, and each drop of blood measures its time, and our life is a lingering fever. (Georg Buchner):
1127 – Ava, German poet (b. 1060). [The first named female writer in any genre in the German language.]
1823 – Ann Radcliffe, English author (b. 1764). [Today’s Woman of the Day, see next post below.]
1871 – Henry E. Steinway, German-American businessman, founded Steinway & Sons (b. 1797).
1873 – Sheridan Le Fanu, Irish author (b. 1814).
1891 – Marie Louise Andrews, American story writer and journalist (b. 1849).
1938 – Harvey Samuel Firestone, American businessman, founded the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company (b. 1868).
1959 – Guitar Slim, American singer and guitarist (b. 1926).
1979 – Josef Mengele, German SS officer and physician (b. 1911).
2001 – Anne Morrow Lindbergh, American author and pilot (b. 1906).
2017 – Richard Hatch, American actor (b. 1945).
2017 – Hans Rosling, Swedish academic (b. 1948).
2019 – Albert Finney, English actor (b. 1936).
2020 – Li Wenliang, Chinese ophthalmologist who initially warned about COVID-19 (b. 1986).
Woman of the Day:
[Text from Wikipedia]
Ann Radcliffe (née Ward; born 9 July 1764, died on this day in 1823) was an English novelist and a pioneer of Gothic fiction. Her technique of explaining apparently supernatural elements in her novels has been credited with gaining respectability for Gothic fiction in the 1790s. Radcliffe was the most popular writer of her day and almost universally admired; contemporary critics called her the mighty enchantress and the Shakespeare of romance-writers, and her popularity continued through the 19th century. Interest in Radcliffe and her work has revived in the early 21st century, with the publication of three biographies.
Both of her parents were relatively well connected. An only child, her father worked as a haberdasher in London before moving the family to Bath in 1772 to take over management of a porcelain shop for his business partners Thomas Bentley [her maternal uncle] and Josiah Wedgwood. Wedgwood’s daughter Sukey, Radcliffe’s only known childhood companion, married Dr. Robert Darwin and had a son, the naturalist Charles Darwin.
In 1787, aged 23, she married William Radcliffe (1763–1830), an Oxford-educated journalist. He later wrote for (and soon became the editor of) the Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, a campaigning newspaper that “celebrated the French Revolution, freedom of the press, and Dissenter’s rights”. They had no children.
Ann started writing while her husband remained out late most evenings for work. She published her first novel, The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne, in 1789 at the age of 25, and published her next four novels in short succession. The money she earned from her novels later allowed her husband to quit his job, and the two of them travelled together, along with their dog, Chance. In 1794, they went to the Netherlands and Germany. This was Radcliffe’s only trip abroad, and it became the inspiration for a travelogue, titled A Journey Made in the Summer of 1794, that she published a year later. On this trip, the Radcliffes were initially meant to go on to Switzerland, but this plan was “frustrated by a disobliging official, who refused to believe that they were English, and would not honor their passports.” In 1797, The Italian, the last novel she would publish in her lifetime, appeared. She was paid £800 for it, which was three times her husband’s yearly income.
In her final years, Radcliffe retreated from public life and was rumoured to have gone insane as a result of her writing. These rumours were later proven false. Radcliffe continued to write poetry and another novel that was not published until after her death.
In 1823, she caught a fatal chest infection and died on 7 February 1823 at the age of 58.
Shortly after her death, Gaston de Blondeville was published by Henry Colburn, featuring A Memoir for the Authoress, the first known biographical piece on Radcliffe. It also contained some of her poetry and her essay “On the Supernatural in Poetry,” which outlines her distinction between terror and horror.
Christina Rossetti attempted to write a biography of Radcliffe in 1883, but abandoned it for lack of information. For 50 years, biographers stayed away from her as a subject, agreeing with Rossetti’s estimation. Rictor Norton, author of Mistress of Udolpho: The Life of Ann Radcliffe (1999), argues that those 50 years were “dominated by interpretation rather than scholarship” where information (specifically on her rumoured madness) was repeated rather than traced to a reliable source.
Radcliffe influenced many later authors, both by inspiring more Gothic fiction and by inspiring parodies. These include Jane Austen, Edgar Allan Poe, Sir Walter Scott, Charlotte and Emily Brontë, Honoré de Balzac, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, and Charles Baudelaire. As a child, Fyodor Dostoyevsky was deeply impressed by Radcliffe. In Winter Notes on Summer Impressions (1863) he writes, “I used to spend the long winter hours before bed listening (for I could not yet read), agape with ecstasy and terror, as my parents read aloud to me from the novels of Ann Radcliffe. Then I would rave deliriously about them in my sleep”. A number of scholars have noted elements of Gothic literature in Dostoyevsky’s novels, and some have tried to show direct influence of Radcliffe’s work.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Radcliffe
Republicans killed the border bill because it spent more money when no more money was needed and it legalized illegal immigration to the tune of 1.8 million people a year. Besides, given how the Biden administration has been flouting the law for the past three years, there’s no reason to think that Biden wouldn’t leave things as they are and use the money to pay to trans affirmative care for illegals. Biden has all the money, people, and power he needs to stop this problem, and always has. Look what’s happened in Texas: entry of illegals has dwindled to a trickle. The mess on the border is there because the Biden Administration wants it. It is a positive policy.
Trump doesn’t want the deal, that’s the overarching reason Republicans killed it. Plus, Putin doesn’t want Ukraine to get any aid and Trump and MAGA are Putin’s puppets.
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.” -Feynman
Face it, handguns and assault rifles are made, sold, and purchased to fulfill a very short list of practical uses: kill people efficiently and from a safe distance, practice to kill people, pretend to kill people, and threaten to kill people. If you own one (or many) and have no intention of killing people, then you don’t have bullets, right?
Absolutely correct.
I well remember a question at the RAF OASC, why does a pilot or aircrewman carry a
sidearm and a ground technician or support airman carry a sidearm, AR or LMG?
Surprising the number of candidates who launched into explanations relating to restricted space in aircraft etc when of course the only correct answer is “ to kill the enemy”
Careful where you point that thing…
“The TP-82 (Russian: ТП-82) is an out-of-service triple-barreled Soviet combination gun carried by cosmonauts on space missions. It was intended as a survival aid to be used after landings and before recovery in the Siberian wilderness.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TP-82
+1
Firearms have multiple and many uses, only some of which involve other humans. Many of the uses that do involve other humans are also explicitly legal.
For instance, in the US where the relevant mass murder occurred guns are constitutionally protected so that the public can if needed defend themselves against the Government.
Disclosure: I own a firearm. I have no desire or intention to shoot anybody with it.
“Subterranean Jews” would be a cool name for a rock group.
Yes Ken along with Moishe and di fir kashes
Are they subterranean homesick Jews?
BTW, that tweet turned out to be about some odd Jewish group that had tunneled under the street to gain more space for their temple. I think it was reported on here. The point is that this guy wasn’t crazy.
Nice one.
I’m no Reagan fan, but never, but never EVER believe or quote/retweet any of those large photo/quotes on twitter. I’ve found them to be almost all made-up.
Maybe Reagan said that (I didn’t read it), maybe he didn’t, quote photos on twitter shouldn’t be how we decide anything.
I think a lot of the amazing animals doing weird things tweets are AI fakes also. Ask yourself: how much do these people record their pets to catch their cat waltzing or their dog pitching a baseball? (say).
D.A.
NYC
David, I’m with you on being highly skeptical of these things, indeed, most things on the Internet these days.
I’m troubled by the verdict holding the parent responsible for the child’s actions. The idea that she could’ve prevented the shooting implies that she could’ve predicted the shooting. No one predicted it. From Billy Binion’s piece; “She was not the only one who was apparently caught off guard by Ethan’s internal struggles. “I didn’t think he could possibly be the shooter,” testified Kristy Gibson-Marshall, an Oxford High School assistant principal, as the act constituted what she believed was a radical departure from his character. “It seemed so odd that it would be him.” Superintendent Tim Throne echoed that: “At no time did counselors believe the student might harm others based on his behavior, responses, and demeanor,” he testified, “which appeared calm.””
My understanding is that he was tried as an adult. Holding one adult accountable for the actions of another, with no evidence of any support for those actions?
There’s also an interesting disconnect going on. Parents are increasingly being excluded from their child’s social gender transition decision, yet the schools claiming they have responsibility for the child (and not the parent) haven’t been prosecuted for manslaughter.
I will confess to not having followed the story super closely and I don’t subscribe to the WSJ so I can’t read the linked articles, but based on what I’ve read elsewhere I have no problem with the verdict. Other reports have indicated that the mother was not a responsible parent. She had once told the boy that his only problem with breaking rules was getting caught. And she seems to have had more than ample warning that something was deeply wrong with the boy. The school had brought the parents in on the very day of the shooting, but they waved it all away and sent the boy back to school. No one “predicts” a shooting, but there are warning signs that serious problems may exist and those cannot be ignored.
The mother had gotten notes from her son about his having hallucinations, demons and flying clothing, and indications of self-hatred. But instead of acting on that and getting him help, or at least talking with him and trying to understand what was happening, the parents gifted him a gun. Not one of any number of non-lethal items that they could have chosen, a gun. And no, not a baseball bat, a GUN.
This is madness. So unless I’m missing material facts, I think the conviction is warranted.
“I’ll mention ‘consciousness’ here. . .”
Jerry left this dangling with an ellipsis, so I’ll take the bait. First, some throat clearing: My position on consciousness is provisional and subject to change given harder evidence and a theory with greater predictive properties. That said, I’m currently in the camp of the new mysterians, in the company of Steven Pinker and Sam Harris. See the quotations of these two worthies on the Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_mysterianism
I would generally agree with you on the quotes from Steven Pinker and Sam Harris, although I also suspect that consciousness is simpler than what most people think it is. (Caveat: I’m certainly no expert on the subject, and my reading about it is pretty random and spotty.) Constant or frequent recursion seems to involved. Does anyone discuss “recursion” as a function of consciousness?
Of those three “beautiful” numbers, I now have an idée fixe on e-day (2/7).
To celebrate National Periodic Table Day: https://www.besse.at/sms/matter.html ,
containing Tom Weller’s priceless version of the Table. Then, of course, there is also
Tom Lehrer’s rendition at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGM-wSKFBpo .
The 2002 Ig Nobel Chemistry Prize was awarded to the creator of the periodic table table 🙂 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ig_Nobel_Prize_winners#2002
A short Bio of Elliott Abrams from the Council on Foreign Relations:
“Elliott Abrams is senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in Washington, DC. He served as deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor in the administration of President George W. Bush, where he supervised U.S. policy in the Middle East for the White House, and as Special Representative for Iran and Venezuela in the administration of Donald Trump.”
In other words, he was an architect of Bush et al.’s disastrous Iraq/Middle East policies. For that reason, I am skeptical of his opinions.
Too bad Eliot Abrams is roaming free. He was one of the most relentless
criminals involved in the Central America crimes.