Happy new year, everybody... and good night!
Thursday, December 31, 2020
"In Scottish custom, Unspoken Water was water believed to have healing properties when collected 'from under a bridge, over which the living pass and the dead are carried...'"
"'... brought in the dawn or twilight to the house of a sick person, without the bearer’s speaking, either in going or returning.'... The custom is long obsolete. The 1901 The Book of Saint Fittick by Thomas White Ogilvie contains an elderly woman's account of being 'the last wife in Torry to cure a bairn wi' unspoken water ... comin' or gaun I spak' tae naebody — for that's what mak's unspoken water.'"
From "Unspoken Water," Wikipedia, clicked on from "Religion and Water," Wikipedia, which I was reading to pursue some ideas that occurred to me as I was listening to the song "Drifting Too Far From the Shore," which Meade has been playing — in various versions — all morning. (The Dylan song with virtually the same title is different, but influenced by this old song.)
The Scottish meaning of "unspoken" is "Without having spoken" — according to the OED, which quotes an 1825 Scottish dictionary: "Unspoken water, water..brought..to the house of a sick person, without the bearer's speaking either in going or returning."
Orgasms and sandwiches.
From a post at Reddit about the 1973 book "Understanding the Female Orgasm" by Dr. Seymour Fisher:
AND: We all remember when Warren Zevon said "Enjoy every sandwich and you know what I mean by sandwich."
something I found googling his name.... "Part of the early research leading to that book found that women who enjoyed food were likely to enjoy sex as well, and that put a twist into the Fishers' social life, Rhoda Fisher said. 'When we got to somebody's house for dinner,' she said, 'no women wanted to sit near him. They thought he'd analyze their food.'"
If I had to choose between an orgasm and like a really good sandwich, I'd pick the sandwich. I don't know what that says about me.
Absolutely. If I had to live without orgasming for the rest of my life, I'd feel a bit sad and frustrated, but if I had to live without really good sandwiches, I would be undone...
Just yesterday, I complained on another post my orgasms are pretty meh so it was such an easy choice. Give me a fricken sandwich with everything on it!!
IN THE COMMENTS: Meade says, "And remember— you can’t fake a sandwich."
I google "marcel marceau eats a sandwich"...
ALSO: "Once I ate a hamster sandwich...."
Precise opportunity seized.
Last midnight: "2020, 24 hours to go..." (my son John, at Facebook, embedding "I Wanna Be Sedated").
"Mr. Hawley’s challenge is not unprecedented... Democrats in both the House and Senate challenged certification of the 2004 election results..."
"... and House Democrats tried on their own to challenge the 2016 and 2000 outcomes, though without Senate support. ... Senator Barbara Boxer of California... briefly delayed the certification of George W. Bush’s victory... cit[ing] claims that Ohio election officials had improperly purged voter rolls... which Mr. Bush carried by fewer than 120,000 votes. Nancy Pelosi, then the House Democratic leader, supported the challenge.... The House voted 267 to 31 against the challenge and the Senate rejected it 74 to 1... After the 2016 election, several House Democrats tried again, rising during the joint session to register challenges against Mr. Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton in various states. The Democrats cited reasons ranging from long lines at polling sites to the Kremlin’s election influence operation."
So... in the last three decades, every time a Republican won, Congressional Democrats challenged the certification of the election, and every time a Democrat won, Congressional Republicans did not challenge the certification.
That certainly puts a different light on what Josh Hawley is doing!
Either challenging the certification is the norm or it is not. It can't be the norm for Democrats and abnormal when a Republican does the same thing. Either Congress has a role in looking into the workings of the state elections or it does not. It can't be that the role is to question Republican victories and rubber-stamp Democratic victories.
I can see — in the NYT write up — the basis for arguing that there actually should be a lopsided role. To fill out something I elided above: "In challenging those results Democrats cited claims that Ohio election officials had improperly purged voter rolls and otherwise disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of voters in the state...."
The argument that's hinted at is that there should be heightened scrutiny where the challenge has to do with discrimination against a traditionally discriminated against group.
Wednesday, December 30, 2020
"Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley said Wednesday he will object when Congress counts the Electoral College votes next week, which will force lawmakers in both the House and Senate to vote..."
"... on whether to accept the results of President-elect Joe Biden's victory.... The objection will not change the outcome of the election, only delaying the inevitable affirmation of Biden's victory in November over President Donald Trump. Democrats will reject any objections in the House, and multiple Republican senators have argued against an objection that will provide a platform for Trump's baseless conspiracy theories claiming the election was stolen from him. Hawley's objection, which other senators may still join, will also put many of his Senate Republican colleagues in a difficult political position, forcing them to vote on whether to side with Trump or with the popular will of the voters."
"A pack of young bicyclists attacked a BMW in broad daylight in Manhattan, terrorizing the man and woman inside in a terrifying ambush caught on video."
"Several assailants surrounded the luxury ride at Fifth Avenue and 21st Street around 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, with some pounding the vehicle with their fists and feet, and another smashing a bike down on top of it... One attacker got a running start, vaulted up on the hood of the BMW and jumped on top of the windshield, causing it to partly cave in... The same group similarly attacked a cab a short time later...."
"Russian riot police stormed into a monastery Tuesday to detain a rebel monk who has castigated the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church leadership and denied the existence of the coronavirus...."
"Authorities charged [Father Sergiy] with inciting suicidal actions through sermons in which he urged believers to 'die for Russia.'... When the virus arrived in Russia early this year, the 65-year-old monk denied its existence and denounced government efforts to stem the pandemic as 'Satan’s electronic camp.' He has described the vaccines being developed against COVID-19 as part of a global plot to control the masses via chips.... The monk chastised Russian President Vladimir Putin as a 'traitor to the Motherland' who was serving a Satanic 'world government.'... In his fiery sermons, he... glorified Russia’s last czar, Nicholas II."
Andrew Sullivan detects anti-gay bigotry: "So you agree not wanting to have sex with someone because they have a vagina is a form of bigotry, right?"
So you agree not wanting to have sex with someone because they have a vagina is a form of bigotry, right?
— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) December 29, 2020
I had trouble understanding whether Molly — DFW was (at any point) joking. Until she says, she's free to say (at any point) that she was joking. (Cf. "Schrödinger's Douchebag " (Urban Dictionary "Word of the Day," December 24, 2020.)It’s bigotry and sir I am one of the biggest transgender supporters period. People like you would like nothing but to drop the T from LGBT.
— Molly - DFW (@MollyTex_) December 29, 2020
When I sucked on my formers lovers dick since she was pre op transwoman for me was just a big clit.
Foucault had sex with transwomen
Does genitalia matter? I can see thinking that a person's inner being matters far more than what's on the outside, and that "gender identification" is part of what's on the inside, but when it comes to sexual attraction, we're not required to go solely by what's on the inside, and indeed, if only the inside — the mind — counts, why are we having sexual intercourse at all? How can you say genitalia is irrelevant when what you're talking about is something you do with your genitalia?
This is all very ordinary. We all have our standards. Any given heterosexual person might think: I don't want to have sex with anyone who's overweight or not good looking. You'd be awful to behave disrespectfully to such a person socially, but there's nothing wrong with not wanting to have sex with them.
But these 2 kinds of rejection merge when you start speaking openly about your sexual preferences. It's one thing to think to yourself there's no way I'd have sex with a fat/ugly man/woman, but you would be thought ill of if you said that out loud. If Sullivan makes a big deal about the penis as the sine qua non of gay sex, he's a bit like the heterosexual man who says "No fatties." Your speech is in the social realm. You can refrain from stating what is, in fact, your strict policy.
But speaking publicly about sexual preference has been a big part of the gay rights movement:
"I’ve been against the space program.... After all, we knew there were no resources we could economically bring back from [the moon], and we knew there was no atmosphere."
"Even if the whole thing were paved with diamonds, that wouldn’t help us much. So it seems like a vaudeville stunt. A lot of scientists felt it was money that might be spent in other areas of research. What it was was money spent on engineering. It might as well have been an enormous skyscraper or a huge bridge or something like that. It was publicity and show business, not science. John F. Kennedy was largely responsible for it. He was competitive. He was a tough, joyful athlete and he loved to win. And it wasn’t a bad guess, really, that this might cheer Americans up and make us more energetic. It didn’t quite work out that way, but Kennedy, in his enthusiasm for this thing, was really wishing the best for the American people. He thought it might excite us tremendously.... It seemed childish. It seemed childish even to children. My children simply weren’t interested. There was nothing they wanted on the moon. A third grader knows there’s no atmosphere there. There’s nothing to eat or drink, nobody to talk to. They already know that. There’s more that they want in the Sahara or on the polar icecap.... They picked colorless men to make the trip, because colorless men were the only sort who could stand to make it. In science-fiction stories, people on spaceships are arguing all the time. Well, people who are going to argue shouldn’t go on spaceships in the first place."
Said Kurt Vonnegut in a 1973 interview with Playboy.
Playboy: You said it was sexual.
Vonnegut: It’s a tremendous space fuck, and there’s some kind of conspiracy to suppress that fact. That’s why all the stories about launches are so low-key. They never give a hint of what a visceral experience it is to watch a launch. How would the taxpayers feel if they found out they were buying orgasms for a few thousand freaks within a mile of the launch pad? And it’s an extremely satisfactory orgasm. I mean, you are shaking and you do take leave of your senses. And there’s something about the sound that comes shuddering across the water. I understand that there are certain frequencies with which you can make a person involuntarily shit with sound. So it does get you in the guts.
Playboy: How long does that last?
Vonnegut: Maybe a full minute. It was a night flight, so we were able to keep the thing in sight in a way that wouldn’t have been possible in the daytime. So the sound seemed longer. But who knows? It’s like describing an automobile accident; you can’t trust your memory. The light was tremendous and left afterimages in your eyes; we probably shouldn’t have looked at it.
Playboy: How did the people around you react?
Vonnegut: They were gaga. They were scrogging the universe. And they were sheepish and sort of smug afterward. You could see a message in their eyes, too: Nobody was to tell the outside world that NASA was running the goddamnedest massage parlor in history.
Just so we're clear...
Just so we're clear, "Dick Cheney" is trending because people want ted Cruz to be shot.
— IMPERATOR_NASDAQ (@ImpNasdaq) December 30, 2020
Twitter is a cesspit of sociopaths.
Backstory: "Dick Cheney hunting accident" (Wikipedia).Ted, I enthusiastically encourage you to go hunting with Dick Cheney next time.
— Mrs. Betty Bowers (@BettyBowers) December 29, 2020
"In what is probably the definitive word on how little exercise we can get away with, a new study finds that a mere four seconds of intense intervals, repeated until they amount to about a minute of total exertion..."
"... lead to rapid and meaningful improvements in strength, fitness and general physical performance among middle-aged and older adults.... Ed Coyle, an exercise physiologist at the University of Texas in Austin, and his graduate assistant Jakob Allen suspected that even 20-second spurts, performed intensely, might exceed some exercisers’ tolerance. So, he decided to start looking for the shortest possible interval that was still effective.... [Volunteers aged 50 to 68] sprinted for four seconds, with Dr. Allen calling out a second-by-second countdown, followed by 56 seconds of rest, repeating that sequence 15 times, for a total of 60 seconds of intervals. Over two months, though, the riders’ rest periods declined to 26 seconds and they increased their total number of sprints to 30 per session. At the end of eight weeks, the scientists retested everyone and found substantial differences. On average, riders had increased their fitness by about 10 percent, gained considerable muscle mass and strength in their legs, reduced the stiffness of their arteries and outperformed their previous selves in activities of daily living, all from about three to six minutes a week of actual exercise."
From "Can 4 Seconds of Exercise Make a Difference?" (NYT).
"The statue by Thomas Ball depicts a Black man, shirtless and on his knees, in front of a clothed and standing Abraham Lincoln."
"In one hand, Lincoln holds a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation, while the other is stretched out over the Black man. Ball intended it to look as though the man were rising to freedom, but to many, it looks like he is bowing down or supplicating to Lincoln. Boston artist Tory Bullock, who started the petition, described it this way: 'I’ve been watching this man on his knees since I was a kid. It’s supposed to represent freedom but instead represents us still beneath someone else. I would always ask myself, "If he’s free, why is he still on his knees?"'"
From "Controversial Lincoln statue is removed in Boston, but remains in D.C." (WaP). There are 2 identical statues, the original in Washington and a replica that was in Boston.
The original statue "was commissioned and paid for by a group of Black Americans, many of whom were formerly enslaved," but they "did not have a say in the design of the statue; that distinction went to an all-White committee and the artist, Ball, who was White."
Frederick Douglass was present at the unveiling in 1876, and he criticized the statue in writing a few days later: "What I want to see before I die is a monument representing the negro, not couchant on his knees like a four-footed animal, but erect on his feet like a man."
The question "If he’s free, why is he still on his knees?" is interesting. Whenever stationary art depicts an action, we see a stage of the action. We're in the middle of things. How do you make a statue of a person rising up? If you show him already fully standing, you might lose the expression of the action...
... you don't need to show this figure that close to the ground. And Lincoln looks still and lordly. It is a strange artifact. It's artwork from the past, never the greatest art, but carrying the weight of history, history that includes Frederick Douglass wanting to see a better image of a black man before he died.
***
I looked to see what year Douglass died. It was 1895. I clicked through on the name of his first wife, Anna Murray Douglass:
Anna Murray was... born free, her parents having been manumitted just a month before her birth. A resourceful young woman, by the age of 17 she had established herself as a laundress and housekeeper. Her laundry work took her to the docks, where she met Frederick Douglass, who was then working as a caulker. Murray's freedom made Douglass believe in the possibility of his own. When he decided to escape slavery in 1838, Murray encouraged and helped him by providing Douglass with some sailor's clothing her laundry work gave her access to. She also gave him part of her savings, which she augmented by selling one of her feather beds.
After Douglass had made his way to Philadelphia and then New York, Murray followed him, bringing enough goods with her to be able to start a household.... She helped support the family financially, working as a laundress and learning to make shoes, as Douglass's income from his speeches was sporadic and the family was struggling. She also took an active role in the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society and later prevailed upon her husband to train their sons as typesetters for his abolitionist newspaper, North Star. After the family moved to Rochester, New York, she established a headquarters for the Underground Railroad from her home, providing food, board and clean linen for fugitive slaves on their way to Canada.
Murray Douglass received little mention in Douglass's three autobiographies. Henry Louis Gates has written that "Douglass had made his life story a sort of political diorama in which she had no role."
Tuesday, December 29, 2020
"I loathe domestic life.... I don’t want anyone in my house that I don’t know when they are leaving, so I don’t want there to be anyone else in the house."
"So you’ve never had a live-in relationship?"/"Never! That’s what I’m saying, never! Never. I never did it. I never would do it. I don’t want to do it. I have no interest in it. I don’t like domestic life like that. I am not that share-y a person; I’m not accommodating in that way, in any real way. I have zero ability or desire — the only monogamous relationship I have had in my life is with my car. That is my monogamous relationship; I still have that car, the same car, yes, and the reason that I still have this car is because, unlike humans, I am not tired of the car."
From "Fran Lebowitz vs. the World Talking (on a landline) with the star of Martin Scorsese’s cranky, necessary love letter to New York, Pretend It’s a City" (New York Magazine). I'm quite sure it's not necessary, but it's on Netflix, so I will check it out.
"Like Nietzsche’s Socrates, Trump was 'the buffoon who got himself taken seriously.' Unlike a Socratic buffoon, however..."
"... Trump never overcame himself. Bereft of the wider critique that once confounded political elites, his personality cult is no longer compelling even as a vessel for ressentiment. Its chief acolytes today are the legacy media operations whose fortunes his nonstop controversies helped revive, opportunistic scribblers hoping to cash in on one more #Maga or #Resistance potboiler, and those who prefer that the media focus on anything except the substantive issues raised in 2016. They will happily ride the Trump gravy train as far as it goes, but it’s already running out of steam."
From "Donald Trump's influence will evaporate once he leaves office. Here's why/Those who believe in the invincibility of Trump’s personality cult hold a view of American democracy that is at once too cynical and too naïve" by Julius Krein (The Guardian).
Here's the context of "the buffoon who got himself taken seriously," from Nietzsche’s "Twilight of the Idols":
With Socrates, Greek taste changes in favor of dialectics. What really happened there? Above all, a noble taste is thus vanquished; with dialectics the plebs come to the top. Before Socrates, dialectic manners were repudiated in good society: they were considered bad manners, they were compromising. The young were warned against them. Furthermore, all such presentations of one's reasons were distrusted. Honest things, like honest men, do not carry their reasons in their hands like that. It is indecent to show all five fingers. What must first be proved is worth little. Wherever authority still forms part of good bearing, where one does not give reasons but commands, the dialectician is a kind of buffoon: one laughs at him, one does not take him seriously. Socrates was the buffoon who got himself taken seriously: what really happened there?
William Gibson — deploying the old "grocer's apostrophe" — says something inscrutable about Nazis and the Space Force.
How was it, given fascism's theoretical predilection for kitsch, that the Nazi's generally had such strongly stylin' uniforms? Could it all have been Hugo Boss? https://t.co/C9Su69H1Nb
— William Gibson (@GreatDismal) December 29, 2020
Wednesday, December 23, 2020
Monday, December 14, 2020
Words We're Watching: 'Coronial'
In Latin, corōna is the name for a garland worn on the head as a mark of honor or emblem of majesty as well as for the top part of an entablature or a halo around a celestial body. The word was originally borrowed into English as corona in the 16th century for an entabulature's, or cornice's, topper. In the 1960s, virologists adopted the word as the name for a virus having spiky, crown-like projections as seen under microscope: the coronavirus. On February 11, 2020, the World Health Organization officially announced the disease that spread into a pandemic as the coronavirus disease 2019, which is nicknamed COVID-19 (the "CO" is from corona, "VI" from virus, "D" from disease, and "19" from the year of onset, 2019).
'Coronials': The Coronavirus Generation
When a pandemic strikes, things drastically change and, in turn, new words are born to define and communicate the changes and their repercussions. In the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, we published a guide to coronavirus-related words, and we are considering adding another to the list: coronial. The word was coined as a name for a person conceived or born during the pandemic.
The Coronials will include all those born in December of 2020, and, unless the pandemic ends quickly, the early months of 2021.
— Doctor Edmund Fitzgerald, quoted in The Berkeleyside, 1 Apr. 2020Meanwhile a colleague acquaints me with reports that the generation of children conceived during the pandemic are likely to be called Coronials and then, later, the Quaranteens.
— Ian Warden, The Canberra (Australia) Times, 22 Aug. 2020
If coronial catches on, it could become the fitting adjective to describe the generation born (literally or perhaps figuratively) during the pandemic. In a September 10, 2020, address, American musician Bruce Springsteen used the term "Coronial Generation" when speaking to the 2024 class of Boston College:
We are currently in the midst of an historic experience. On our watch, they shut down the United States of America and the world for the past half year. You are the first Coronial Generation. You are already wizened by this experience, to appreciate the underappreciated. Sporting events. Getting together with your friends. Concerts. Remember those? Well, we will soon look to you for answers for a safer and better world.
Perhaps hearing it from the Boss will encourage others, especially demographers and sociologists, to add it to their vocabulary.
A related, extended term is COVID kid. A Terre Haute, Indiana, firefighter gave COVID kid news publicity with his reported social media statement. After contracting the coronavirus, he wrote, "Unfortunately, I’ve been indoctrinated into a special club. ... I am now a COVID Kid."
We welcome the noun and adjective coronial to our dictionary as well as COVID kid. As recorders of the English language, we embrace the terms but, for now, we must only acknowledge their candidacy for entry with an elbow bump.
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