History

Costermongers & street vendors were once a very common sight on our roads, but the tradition is now all but dead. But travel back 100 years and such characters were everywhere, like this old knife sharpener, photographed in colour by Paul Castelnau on Saturday 17th March 1917. pic.twitter.com/bSmlAT2zvN

— BabelColour (@StuartHumphryes) November 18, 2023

 

An Insight

This is insane.

The algo will be maybe 3/4 as effective. Many people will die. https://t.co/7riJb5tC6z

— Wilfred Reilly (@wil_da_beast630) November 15, 2023

 

I see wonderful things

The Blue-footed Booby (Sula nebouxii) is known for its distinctive bright blue feet, which males use in courtship dances to attract mates.pic.twitter.com/Bu0HU39hR4

— Wonder of Science (@wonderofscience) November 16, 2023

 

Offbeat Humor

BEFORE: “You’re Nazis and should have no place in society”

NOW: “Kill the Jews and praise Osama Bin Laden!”

Same people.

— Razor (@hale_razor) November 17, 2023

 

Reading Pareto

The publishing figures for 2022 were rather depressing. In a country of 332 million people, only 28 books out of ~300,000 titles sold more than 500,000 copies. Eight were by one author, Colleen Hoover, and no book of history or politics sold more than 295,000 copies.

— Jason Colavito (@JasonColavito) January 30, 2023

Read the thread.

Only 28 books sold more than 500,000 copies.

Eight of the top 25 books were by the same author (whom I have never heard of.)

Average bestseller sells 2,000 copies.

Average book sells 200 copies.

300,000 new titles for sale each year.

 

Donder and blitzen of digital prowess

Kory and Keith Caudill play "Boogie Woogie Jingle Bells".  

Double click to enlarge.

Duelling plagiarists

The evolving global news landscape with infinite individual news sources and the thorough discreditation of the legacy mainstream media and government news organs such as NPR requires so much more work in order to piece together a coherent picture of what is happening in the world.  The old MSM narrative/propaganda may have been inaccurate and misleading but at least it was simple and served up ready for consumption.  

Now you have to actively ignore bad information sites, always scan for new sources (institutional or individual), monitor ongoing quality, proactively find sources on an ever evolving array of topics.  It is challenging.

But also interesting and rewarding.  Sometimes you come across the oddest little points in the most unexpected places.

I usually read Ann Althouse's blog.  She is a retired constitutional law professor interested in law, language, localism, and careful analysis of words.  She has reasonably good commenters who add to the conversation she starts.

She has a post on the controversy surrounding Claudine Gay, President of Harvard University who, with two other university presidents, beclowned herself before Congress by pretending to stand for freedom of speech (despite the worst university ranking for free speech), refusing to acknowledge that she allowed antisemitic bullying and physical intimidation of students and at the same time making jesuitical arguments about when chants for antisemitic genocide might become unacceptable.  It was a wretched demonstration of the collapse of university leadership.  

Immediately following the hearings, it emerged in multiple rounds of revelations, that Gray's meager scholarship was riddled with plagiarism and non-attribution of other people's scholarship.  

There is a further emerging scandal about how the Harvard Board has handled the catastrophe.

Another (black) professor is highlighting the challenge to the Mandarin Class and this is who Althouse is citing.  Gay is clearly now (as she always has been) a token DEI affirmative action appointee who was never qualified in any fashion to lead Harvard.  It is now inescapably obvious.  But Harvard has invested so much, so far, in denying the undeniable that their only two choices of action are both unacceptable.  

They can force Gray's resignation and acknowledge that the hoi polloi were always correct, that she was an unqualified DEI appointment.  Or they can keep her in position and be seen to support terrorism, genocide, plagiarism, antisemitism and hatefully selective support of free speech.  And be seen to have been lying all along.

Althouse's post:  "It has always been inconvenient that Harvard’s first Black president has only published 11 academic articles in her career and..."

Commenter Oh Yea said... makes a very relevant observation.

If I were black and/or female I would be particularly offended that Dr. Gay was the best Harvard could hire even if DEI was the primary hiring criteria.

Indeed.  It is one thing to embrace DEI racism and make appointments based on race.  It is entirely another to demonstrate that when hiring based on race, that there are actually no qualified candidates.  The Harvard Board is sotto voce, and entirely inadvertently, amplifying a message they desperately don't want to send.

Commenter tim in vermont said... connects two dots which I independently knew but which I have not seen anywhere otherwise connected.

I think it's great that there is an open plagiarist at the top of Harvard, just like our august POTUS is a plagiarist. It's a perfect symbol of what we have become as a nation.

Biden has always been an intellectual lightweight and moral reprobate, a characterization cemented way back during Biden's first presidential campaign in 1988.  There were a series of unfavorable revelations during the campaign which eventually sank it.  But one of the more spectacular revelations was when Biden repurposed an autobiographical speech from British politician Neil Kinnock without attribution.  As if the plagiarism were not bad enough, Biden refashioned some of his own life story in order to match the details of Kinnock's autobiographical speech.  It was a spectacular display of intellectual and moral vacuousness.  Finally, Kinnock's was a recent speech, occurring just a few months earlier.  

Biden appropriated someone else's speech, someone else's lifestory, lied about his own life to make it match, and did this to another prominent politician (in another country) whose speech was made just a few month's before Biden's appropriation of it.  It was almost as if Biden were demanding to be caught.  

The incident is today downplayed by the media as an obviously embarrassing inconvenience but it was emblematic of much of Biden's career and in character with Obama's counsel “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to fuck things up.” 

It is certainly ironic that the possible capstone of Biden's first term is a bringing together of two members of the Mandarin Class who are both without merit and both of whom relied upon plagiarism.  

London Rooftops by William McDowall (1905–1983)

London Rooftops by William McDowall (1905–1983)

Click to enlarge.

Not a decision the United States ought to rush into.

 From The Coldest Winter by David Halberstam.  Page 94.

That night, all the top military and civilian people dined at Blair House. After dinner they took up the subject of the invasion. Some things were already becoming clear: no one knew how deep the North Korean penetration was, but this was clearly a major invasion and the South Korean forces were not fighting well. They would not be able to hold on their own. After dinner, General Omar Bradley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who had favored pulling American combat troops back from Korea a year earlier because it would be such a terrible place to fight and because it was deemed of so little strategic value, was the first to speak. A line had to be drawn against the Communists, he said, and Korea was as good a place to do so as any. Its value had changed overnight. Truman interrupted to say that he agreed completely. In that moment, the die was cast. Bradley added that, given the size of the attack, the Soviets had to be behind it. Then Admiral Forrest Sherman, the chief of naval operations, and General Hoyt Vandenberg, Air Force chief of staff, spoke. Each reflected the optimism—and dependence—Americans felt about their air and naval superiority, as well as each man’s belief in the unique powers of his own service. Neither had very much respect for the fighting abilities of the North Korean Army. Each was confident that air and sea power could turn back the North Koreans. But Joe Collins, the Army chief of staff, said that based on the reports he was getting, it was likely American ground forces would also be necessary. The commitment of ground troops was a very different—much graver—step. Bradley, Collins, and Frank Pace, the secretary of the Army, all insisted that was not a decision the United States ought to rush into. Bradley would soon note, however, that he had underestimated the force and the ability of the North Koreans. “No one believed that the North Koreans were as strong as they turned out to be,” he later testified.

History

Albert Einstein and Marie Curie discussing near a lake, c. 1929 pic.twitter.com/QKAf6FYfpd

— Physics In History (@PhysInHistory) November 18, 2023