“It’s not a spectator sport” 🤬😂 pic.twitter.com/zaEOzIJxzY
— CCTV_IDIOTS (@cctv_idiots) December 14, 2019
Thursday, January 23, 2020
I see wonderful things
Reelin' In The Years by Steely Dan
Reelin' In The Years by Steely Dan
Click to enlarge.
Click to enlarge.
Reelin' In The Years
by Steely Dan
Your everlasting summer
You can see it fading fast
So you grab a piece of something
That you think is gonna last
But you wouldn't know a diamond
If you held it in your hand
The things you think are precious
I can't understand
Are you reelin' in the years
Stowin' away the time
Are you gatherin' up the tears
Have you had enough of mine
Are you reelin' in the years
Stowin' away the time
Are you gatherin' up the tears
Have you had enough of mine
You been tellin' me you're a genius
Since you were seventeen
In all the time I've known you
I still don't know what you mean
The weekend at the college
Didn't turn out like you planned
The things that pass for knowledge
I can't understand
Are you reelin' in the years
Stowin' away the time
Are you gatherin' up the tears
Have you had enough of mine
Are you reelin' in the years
Stowin' away the time
Are you gatherin' up the tears
Have you had enough of mine
I spend a lot of money
And I spent a lot of time
The trip we made in Hollywood
Is etched upon my mind
After all the things we've done and seen
You find another man
The things you think are useless
I can't understand
Are you reelin' in the years
Stowin' away the time
Are you gatherin' up the tears
Have you had enough of mine
Are you reelin' in the years
Stowin' away the time
Are you gatherin' up the tears
Have you had enough of mine
Same event, two movies.
Scott Adams speaks of people watching two movies - the same flow of facts and dialog but with two different interpretations of what is happening in the movie.
A couple of minor examples of that which come together this morning.
Sometime in the past 2-3 days I picked up commentary from NPR related to when President Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about his workplace dalliance with a subordinate. The claim made was that he turned over 90,000 pages of documents to the House during its investigation.
Something did not sit quite right with the claim. While 90,000 pages sounds like a lot, is it really? My email account over the past decade would printout as more than 90,000 pages. I am not sure that 90,000 pages is as impressive a metric as is implied. Second, I remember those proceedings reasonably well. Clinton was under continuous investigation from soon after his election - Whitewater, Filegate, Travelgate are the things that spring to mind. Sex in the Oval office was an incidental discovery to the financial and operational crimes alleged.
The House impeachment investigation was just another investigation. Clinton fought all of those investigations, refusing to the last minute and under judicial duress, to turn over documents. Did he really cooperate with the House investigation.
Listening to the claim on the radio, a claim repeated by multiple interviewees and pundits, that didn't sound quite right. That's only twenty years ago. Why are the media accepting the claim so glibly? It should be easy to question.
As Byron York does in Impeachment, Democrats, and those 90,000 documents. So am I misremembering or are the media pundits misrepresenting? B.
So back to the movie. We hear the same dialog - 90,000 pages. One person, by youth or poor memory or partisan commitment or faith in the media or lack of reading, hears 90,000 and imputes significance. I hear the same claim and because I read excessively and remember much and lived through that period and recall the events, I impute bad faith argument. One dialog, two movies.
Then there was this flap from a couple of days ago reported by Ed Driscoll in Nazis, Nazis, Everywhere! Talia Lavin was the New Yorker magazine fact-checker who had to resign a couple of years ago after claiming an ICE agent had a Nazi tattoo. He was a badly injured veteran who had a military tattoo which she simply failed to recognize. Nothing to do with Nazi's. She apologized and resigned. Bad incident but a reasonable outcome in that media people have the capacity to destroy ordinary people's lives and careers through simple malicious carelessness.
Well, she's back. And still watching the other movie. There was the demonstration in Virginia this week in support of second amendment rights. Despite all the preparatory scare stories heralding riots and massacres, it went off without a hiccough. Some 20,000 people, many heavily armed, strolled around Richmond. There were amusing placards galore. I especially liked
Click to enlarge.
And harsh but humorous partisan memes of course.
Click to enlarge.
And then there was Talia Lavin's take:
Click to enlarge.
To which Driscoll responds.
One of the inadvertent points is that of course you have to read the media skeptically.
The other is that there are always two movies playing. Peaceful, diverse, good-natured, amusing American demonstration for civil rights or yet another nazi related disturbance? Same event, two movies.
A couple of minor examples of that which come together this morning.
Sometime in the past 2-3 days I picked up commentary from NPR related to when President Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about his workplace dalliance with a subordinate. The claim made was that he turned over 90,000 pages of documents to the House during its investigation.
Something did not sit quite right with the claim. While 90,000 pages sounds like a lot, is it really? My email account over the past decade would printout as more than 90,000 pages. I am not sure that 90,000 pages is as impressive a metric as is implied. Second, I remember those proceedings reasonably well. Clinton was under continuous investigation from soon after his election - Whitewater, Filegate, Travelgate are the things that spring to mind. Sex in the Oval office was an incidental discovery to the financial and operational crimes alleged.
The House impeachment investigation was just another investigation. Clinton fought all of those investigations, refusing to the last minute and under judicial duress, to turn over documents. Did he really cooperate with the House investigation.
Listening to the claim on the radio, a claim repeated by multiple interviewees and pundits, that didn't sound quite right. That's only twenty years ago. Why are the media accepting the claim so glibly? It should be easy to question.
As Byron York does in Impeachment, Democrats, and those 90,000 documents. So am I misremembering or are the media pundits misrepresenting? B.
So a question: Where did the figure of 90,000 pages, or documents, come from? Did Clinton helpfully cooperate with the House Republicans who were trying to remove him from office 20 years ago?York is a partisan commentator so his position needs to be taken with a grain of salt as well but it matches much more closely with my own recollection.
It turns out Schiff, Pelosi, and their colleagues were not telling the whole story. They got the 90,000 figure, apparently, from Clinton's rebuttal to the Starr report — the report independent counsel Kenneth Starr turned over to Congress on Sept. 9, 1998, after seven months of investigating the Monica Lewinsky affair. In that rebuttal, given to Congress on Sept. 11, Clinton's lawyers wrote: "During the past four and a half years, the President has ... produced more than 90,000 pages of documents and other items" to investigators.
But not to Congress. The Clinton situation was entirely different from the one Schiff and his fellow Democrats face today. Starr was an independent counsel with full law enforcement powers, and his office issued many grand jury subpoenas pushing Clinton, who often resisted fiercely, to turn over the 90,000 documents over the course of four and a half years, covering the Whitewater, Travelgate, Filegate, and Lewinsky investigations.
"If memory serves me correctly, I don't think he voluntarily gave us anything," said Sol Weisenberg, a former Starr prosecutor, in a conversation Tuesday.
So back to the movie. We hear the same dialog - 90,000 pages. One person, by youth or poor memory or partisan commitment or faith in the media or lack of reading, hears 90,000 and imputes significance. I hear the same claim and because I read excessively and remember much and lived through that period and recall the events, I impute bad faith argument. One dialog, two movies.
Then there was this flap from a couple of days ago reported by Ed Driscoll in Nazis, Nazis, Everywhere! Talia Lavin was the New Yorker magazine fact-checker who had to resign a couple of years ago after claiming an ICE agent had a Nazi tattoo. He was a badly injured veteran who had a military tattoo which she simply failed to recognize. Nothing to do with Nazi's. She apologized and resigned. Bad incident but a reasonable outcome in that media people have the capacity to destroy ordinary people's lives and careers through simple malicious carelessness.
Well, she's back. And still watching the other movie. There was the demonstration in Virginia this week in support of second amendment rights. Despite all the preparatory scare stories heralding riots and massacres, it went off without a hiccough. Some 20,000 people, many heavily armed, strolled around Richmond. There were amusing placards galore. I especially liked
And harsh but humorous partisan memes of course.
And then there was Talia Lavin's take:
To which Driscoll responds.
Julio Rosas of Townhall tweets, “Oh look, another person who was *not* at the rally trying to tell everyone else that it wasn’t *really* peaceful. The article also does not mention or acknowledge the hundreds of minorities, who were armed as well, that were there in support of the rally.”Its all a bunch of partisan sniping at one another.
One of the inadvertent points is that of course you have to read the media skeptically.
The other is that there are always two movies playing. Peaceful, diverse, good-natured, amusing American demonstration for civil rights or yet another nazi related disturbance? Same event, two movies.
It only finds us still as true children
From Faust: A Dramatic Poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
Youth, my good friend, you want, indeed, when foes press you hard in the fight,—when the loveliest of lasses cling with ardor round your neck, — when, from afar, the garland of the swift course beckons from the hard-won goal, — when, after the dance's maddening whirl, one drinks away the night carousing. But to strike the familiar lyre with spirit and grace, to sweep along, with happy wanderings, towards a self-appointed aim; — that, old gentleman, is your duty, and we honor you not the less on that account. Old age does not make childish, as men say; it only finds us still as true children.
Wednesday, January 22, 2020
Data Talks
Disorganized email is the best email. This paper shows putting email in folders wastes 11 minutes a day on average. People who use folders take more time to find stuff compared to people who use search, and have no higher accuracy in finding what they want. pic.twitter.com/CkiB4tNtwm
— Ethan Mollick (@emollick) December 13, 2019
Best of the Bee
After Senseless Murder Of Goliath, Philistines Call For Ban On Fully Automatic, High-Capacity Slings https://t.co/O1MVOawRXY
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) January 21, 2020
Fearless (You'll Never Walk Alone) by Pink Floyd
Fearless (You'll Never Walk Alone) by Pink Floyd
Double click to enlarge.
Double click to enlarge.
Fearless (You'll Never Walk Alone)
by Pink Floyd
You say the hill's too steep to climb
Chiding!
You say you'd like to see me try
Climbing!
You pick the place and I'll choose the time
And I'll climb
The hill in my own way
just wait a while, for the right day
And as I rise above the treeline and the clouds
I look down hear the sound of the things you said today
Fearlessly the idiot faced the crowd, smiling
Merciless, the magistrate turns 'round, frowning
and who's the fool who wears the crown
Go down in your own way
And everyday is the right day
And as you rise above the fear lines in his brown
You look down
Hear the sound of the faces in the crowd
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