Barnum and Dennison
At Innovation Hub , a conversation about P.T. Barnum, touching on resemblances to the current president.
Trappist survival
The New York Times reports on Mepkin Abbey, a Trappist monastery struggling to survive.
WHAT?
If David Brooks’s most recent New York Times column were a student paper to be graded, I’d be tempted to write, repeatedly, in the margins: WHAT ?
The best and the brightest
Jared Kushner, conducting research on Amazon.
Russia and Rex
From Jane Mayer’s article about Christopher Steele Trump dossier: did Russia influence Trump’s choice for Secretary of State?
Sam Nunberg Day
All I know is that if you’re serious about ducking a subpoena, you slip out of the country, quiet-like.
10p coins, A to Z
From the Royal Mint, ten-pence coins, celebrating British culture from A to Z.
From China to Washington
“Advice to Washington from Ancient China,” assembled by Eliot Weinberger.
Comic books and Post headlines
Trump’s masculinist dream is partly the stuff of a comic book (everyday fellow with secret powers, including perfect aim), partly the stuff of a New York Post headline (Retired General Takes Down Sicko).
Calling BS
I expect to hear Emma González’s words with increasing frequency in the fight for gun control.
Listening
President Donald Trump holds notes telling him to show empathy. “5. I hear you.”
Needed: a word other than “meddle”
“Russian meddling” is too trivial a description of what’s gone on.
Emma González for Congress
She addressed a rally for gun control and called B.S.
“Prayers and condolences,” again
A student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Parkland, Florida, responding to a presidential tweet offering “prayers and condolences.”
“The only variable”
From The New York Times: “The only variable that can explain the high rate of mass shootings in America is its astronomical number of guns.”
Monsters
One could argue that “intelligent, kind, chivalrous, caring, professional” just makes for a monster who is less likely to be recognized as such.
Misspelling history
It’s Black History Month, yes, and the office of the White House press secretary has misspelled Frederick Douglass’s last name.
Reality TV and the White House
“Omarosa was fired three times on The Apprentice, and this is the fourth time we let her go.” “We”? The blurred line between reality TV and the White House could not be clearer.
From the Saturday Stumper
CANASTA.
The Democracy Index
The Economist ’s 2017 Democracy Index has determined that less than 5% of the world’s population currently lives in a “full democracy.”
Things to do on Tuesday
I have to wash my hair, or something. I will be very busy.
Price points
Un café. Un café, por favor. Buenos días, un café por favor.
Julius Lester (1939–2018)
“It takes an enormous effort of will to be moral, and that’s another paradox. Only to the extent that we make the effort to be moral do we grow away from adolescent notions of freedom and begin to see that the true nature of freedom does not lie in ‘striking out for the territory ahead’ but resides where it always has — in the territory within.”
Just a thought
Children restrained, taunted with food: I wonder if so-called blanket training is a partial explanation of what went on in David and Louise Turpin’s house.
MLK
From Martin Luther King’s “The Other America,” a speech delivered at Grosse Pointe South High School, Grosse Pointe, Michigan, March 14, 1968.
Recently updated
At Wilfrid Laurier University, there’s now a fact-finding report and a university president’s statement.
Recently updated
Oxford Dictionaries announces its word of the year.
M-W sentence challenge
“In the name of federalism, show some empathy, or at least some syzygy, you complicit gaffe-prone dotard,” the hurricane warned, “before I turn you into a gyro platter and recuse myself!”
Words of the year
Several picks.
Bully for Woolly
I thought I was reading a spoof, but no, Woolly, a magazine, is real.