The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    barefooted's picture

    Breathe

    Sometimes it feels like the whole world is in turmoil. There's no end to the bad news, no rest for the weariest information Googler or cable news addict. The constant bombardment of brightly colored linkiness is just enough to keep us hooked. Funnily enough, once we check the TV for breaking news, our handheld whatevers for in-depth website analysis and favorite blogs for our opinions, we're kinda let down. Deflated balloons in need of someone else's hot air. How fortunate that it's always abundantly available.

    Elusive Trope's picture

    Don't Reform the Supreme Court

    http://media.komonews.com/images/Supreme+Court+Cellpho_Cata+copy.jpgIn the aftermath of the ruling in favor of Hobby Lobby (and a few other decisions), there are some who are calling for reform of the Supreme Court.  In May, Norm Ornstein in the Atlantic makes a compelling case for term limits, and links to another Atlantic article by David Paul Kuhn a few years back about the increased polarization of the Supreme Court in recent times.

    barefooted's picture

    Personnel File

    Good morning, employee. I am the Benevolent Overseer of Subservient Subordinates. You may refer to me as BOSS. I understand that you and the other female employees have some questions, and I am pleased to address your concerns. However, bear in mind that while your time is at my disposal your speech is strictly limited, so keep your input to a minimum. Proceed.

    You wish to lodge a what?

    barefooted's picture

    WHAT'S IN A WORD?

    Reparation. It's a word that elicits gut reactions and knee-jerk commentary. It serves as a blanket to both cover our ills and comfort our transgressions. Yet its fabric cannot repair or replace broken dreams or tears shed long ago. History cannot be changed. But can the glaring holes in the blanket be stitched with inferior threads by a shameful country? Case in point:

    jollyroger's picture

    Prez: "Impeachment? Bring it, suckahs!"

    It is widely held that John Boehner's latest bit of clowning (the impending lawsuit over executive action over reach) is a desperate attempt to placate the impeachment hawks in his caucus.
    Elusive Trope's picture

    We Know It When We See It

    I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.
        —Justice Potter Stewart, concurring opinion in Jacobellis v. Ohio 378 U.S. 184 (1964), regarding possible obscenity in The Lovers.

    This past weekend was the 50th Anniversary of the US Supreme Court’s decision on Jacobellis v. Ohio, in which Justice Stewart included his opinion that utilized the (now possibly over-used) expression “I know it when I see it.” Later he would state:

    “In a way I regret having said what I said about obscenity -- that’s going to be on my tombstone. When I remember all of the other solid words I’ve written…I regret a little bit that if I’ll be remembered at all I’ll be remembered for that particular phrase.”

    Giddy up, Horse

      I assume that anyone reading this notices, like most Americans who are either literate or have a TV, or who listen to drive-time AM radio, that we are heavily involved in the Middle East. We have at least a general knowledge of how the last thirty years or so have played out. If we are intellectually honest [IMO] we admit and acknowledge that the USA has no business being there as an influential power except for the business of business.

    Richard Day's picture

    CONTRIBUTE TO DAGBLOG FOR CHRISSAKES!

    Mike has asked us to contribute to his blog site.

    I don't have any money; but $1200 a month with rent at 364 leaves me with more money than I have seen (started in 2012) for a long time.

    Richard Day's picture

    REDSKINS ARE NOW HISTORY!

    You do not really live longer, it just seems longer.

    (GB Shaw)

     

    TO THE REDSKINS:

    YER OUT!

    Elusive Trope's picture

    Looking for Mr. Goodcure

    As I commented on one of Maiello’s blogs: “Annie Hall is still one of my favorite movies, in part because it treats relationships in a sentimental but unsentimental way that is rare in the movies. But it also has some of the best off beat humor.” One scene that I didn’t mention in the comment was a conversation between Singer and Hall when they first started to get to know each other:

    Annie Hall: Oh, you see an analyst?
    Alvy Singer: Yeah, just fifteen years.
    Annie Hall: Fifteen years?
    Alvy Singer: Yeah, I’m going to give him one more year, and then I’m going to Lourdes.

    I’ll be honest that until I began working on another blog using this quote (which about a year ago), I had no idea as to what “Lourdes” was a reference to. I assumed it was probably some kind of place like the Vienna Circle, except it was place with the current top-notch psychologists or neuroscientists of the day.  In other words, that particular part of the joke went over my head.  It turns out that Lourdes is

    ...in the Hautes-Pyrénées department in the Midi-Pyrénées region in south-western France,…[where] The Blessed Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to Bernadette Soubirous on a total of eighteen occasions [said to have occurred between 11 February and 16 July 1858]….To date, 69 miracles cures have been recognized, to have occurred and certified by the Lourdes International Medical Committee which has been in  existence since 1947.

    Kidnapping in Israel

    Three students hitchhiking home from their yeshivas in the West Bank have disappeared, believed kidnapped.  Links:

    http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/181681#.U5vzj3Z0rFw

    http://www.jpost.com/National-News/IDF-continues-widespread-search-for-missing-teens-reportedly-arrest-2-Palestinian-youth-359301

    Hitchhiking, though officially frowned upon, is widely practiced in the West Bank because of the inadequacy of public transport.

    jollyroger's picture

    "Don't buy this book; don't read it!" Slate's advice on Hillary's latest opus...

    John Plotz (He of the unfortunate last name...) sums up the judgement of Slate's political gabfest team in re: Hillary Clinton's recently released presidential campaign tocsin  memoir.While the verdict of the panel (Plotz plus the estimable Emily Bazelon and beautifully-mothered John Dickerson) is of interest (they ultimately conclude that the book is intended to freeze the competition while Hillary mulls things over), the best moment yet to proceed from this literary event is (IMHO) the intrusion into R

    Richard Day's picture

    THREE STRIKES AND YER OUT!

    It has been 23 years since my Twins won a World Series Crown; HOW THE HELL DOES ONE SURMISE THAT THERE IS A WORLD SERIES WHEN ONLY ONE COUNTRY IS INVOLVED IN THE FESTIVITIES?

    (Yeah I realize that Canada shows up with one or two teams from time to time, but damn. Of course the Twins get all their players from Cuba anyway, so....)

    Elusive Trope's picture

    A Strangelove Kind of World

    https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/rbi-blogs/wp-content/uploads/mt/flightglobalweb/blogs/left-field/Dr.Strangelove.jpg

    One of the things about approaching the age of fifty is that one is constantly reminded of the fact because everything that occurred during the year one was born is also reaching its 50th anniversary.  In some ways, it is interesting because one is able to see more clearly the culture and Zeitgeist into which one was born. And since we are on the topic of insanity and violence it seems, it is fitting that recently one of the great films of all time Dr. Stangelove had its 50th anniversary.

    David Denby in The New Yorker has written an excellent article, "The Half-Century Anniversary of 'Dr. Strangelove',"  regarding Kubick film including the dynamics of its development of the film.

    Orion's picture

    Eery Stuff In Seattle

    This Seattle Pacific shooting is some eerie stuff. Immediately after I heard about it, I told my landlord about it and her response literally was "What the hell?"

    Seattle Pacific University is a very quiet, conservative religious university in the Queen Anne neighborhood of Seattle. The university is so quiet and (normally) uneventful that I was pretty unaware of its existence in to my late teen years and my recent trip there was my first real visit there.

    Elusive Trope's picture

    When Society is Insane

    A question was proposed on another thread regarding Elliot Rodger‘s murder spree: “Or should we just acknowledge that this was a case of a severe mental illness and leave it at that?”  I would say to that: “No.”   The reason is that even those who are severely mentally ill do not exist in a vacuum.  In most cases, they lived a life without the mental illness.  And even while the illness or syndrome or disorder (or whatever term one wishes to use) is active still are in most cases part of some cultural setting.  

    Richard Day's picture

    CHENEY IS A VERY BAD MAN

     

     

    I wish to go on a rant.

    I keep thinking that I could give this up, but Trope shows up....

    http://dagblog.com/reader-blogs/cia-listening-my-thoughts-18585

    Elusive Trope's picture

    The CIA Is Listening To My Thoughts

    http://disinfo.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/ali21.jpg

    If you want to quickly establish a character in a movie as some crazy paranoid person, having them say that something like the CIA has put some kind of listening chip into their head will do the trick.  I suppose now, the person would say the it was the NSA or Homeland Security.  

    Recently on the NPR website I came across an article that will have these crazy folks even more paranoid:

    The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, is launching a $70 million program to help military personnel with psychiatric disorders using electronic devices implanted in the brain.

    The goal of the five-year program is to develop new ways of treating problems including depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, all of which are common among service members who fought in Iraq or Afghanistan.

    Orion's picture

    The Killer Profile Part Three: Sexual Alienation And The Insane Young Man

    Here we go again. Another mass shooting. Society watches again as another mass shooting occurs as if an insane person, who many people warned was insane, being able to obtain deadly weapons and use them on bystanders was something we could no more stop from happening than a hurricane or tsunami.

    Orion's picture

    Why I Still Believe In People

    I am a radical in life. Why? Despite all evidence to the contrary, I still believe in people.

    The news will definitely get you down and much of your personal experience may get you down too. It's common to hear people screaming at one another in this world and the constant barrage of drug and gun deaths certainly makes one feel as if humanity is resigned to a horrible fate.

    Richard Day's picture

    EQUAL PROTECTION UNDER THE LAW

    Maat.svg

    MAAT

     

    We shouldn't be stackin poles, we should be getting them gators!

    (Swamp People)

     

    THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT

     

    Elusive Trope's picture

    My Robot's Therapy Sessions Seem To Be Helping It

    Recently in The Independent, Stephen Hawking, with co-authors Stuart Russell, Max Tegmark, and Frank Wilczek, warn of dangers of Artificial Intelligence.

    ….it's tempting to dismiss the notion of highly intelligent machines as mere science fiction. But this would be a mistake, and potentially our worst mistake in history….
    …..
    Looking further ahead, there are no fundamental limits to what can be achieved: there is no physical law precluding particles from being organised in ways that perform even more advanced computations than the arrangements of particles in human brains. An explosive transition is possible...

    One can imagine such technology outsmarting financial markets, out-inventing human researchers, out-manipulating human leaders, and developing weapons we cannot even understand. Whereas the short-term impact of AI depends on who controls it, the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all.

    Orion's picture

    Coping With Grief Part Two: The Pain Of Deterioration

    Hello all,

    I'm writing about Jennifer Reimer again. Some friends have found it odd that I've put together so much public material about her. Privacy around one's passing makes alot of sense for some - however, if you take a look at Jen's website Practice of Madness, you'll find that she made almost all of her life public. Her gripes with her father, her mourning for her mom, whatever was plaguing her mentally, addiction and her physical illnesses - it was all for public display. I also seriously need to get this out for my own good.

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